Re: PATCH: Fix cxxfilt.c

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at wasabisystems dot com>]

"Zack Weinberg" <zack@codesourcery.com> writes:

> Ian Lance Taylor <ian@wasabisystems.com> writes:
> 
> > "H. J. Lu" <hjl@lucon.org> writes:
> >
> >> cxxfilt is supposed to accept -h and -v. But they aren't allowed. This
> >> patch fixes it.
> >
> > Why do you say that c++filt is supposed to accept -h and -v?  They're
> > not in the usage message.  They're not in the documentation.  --help
> > and --version are listed in both places, but -h and -v are listed in
> > neither.
> 
> To the maximum extent possible, all options should have short names.
> This is especially true of -h and -v which are commonly supported by
> Unix-derived command line tools.  c++filt may not currently accept
> these options but that is not a reason for it not to.

I'm not really sure that I agree for the special cases of --help and
--version.  There is no standard short option form for those options,
and there can not be for historical reasons, so any short option form
is relatively useless.  You can't tell which short option to use
unless you use the long option first.

That said, if you really want to change c++filt, it's OK, but you have
to change the documentation and the usage message also.

Ian