Re: cut enhancement: -C as short option for --complement (original) (raw)

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From: Mark Krenz
Subject: Re: cut enhancement: -C as short option for --complement
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 20:38:15 +0000
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14)

On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 05:08:23PM GMT, Jim Meyering [address@hidden] said the following:

Did you know that --co is an acceptable abbreviation for --complement?

Actually I didn't know you can do this with programs that use getopts. Do you happen to know where is this documented?

I also feel like relying on this behavior can be a bad thing. Eventually another option may come along and all the people who are used to typing --co will suddenly need to use another character or two. Then eventually you might as well just type in the whole option anyways.

We try to avoid adding new short-named options unless there is a very compelling reason.

I understand this stance and agree with it in many cases due to the overpolluted option namespaces you see in some programs. However it seems harmless enough in the case of the cut command, which has only a few options and also already has the complement functionality, but simply has no short option for it.

Lots of programs have modes where they do the reverse of what they normally do by default (grep -v for instance). I would think that a short option for reversing cuts default operation would be a welcome addition for many people. So I think that's a pretty compelling reason to add a short option for it and save even more typing.

-- Mark Krenz address@hidden

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