ralph wrote:
Hi Paul,
Valdis wrote:
Ralph wrote:
That quickly bores. -noprint doesn't seem a good fit for a
general `please be quiet'. If folder's regaining that
functionality then perhaps it's the opportunity to use a more
general, positive rather than negative, option? Especially if it
has an often unambiguous abbreviation.
-silent?
i guess i don't think -noprint is so bad. it's pretty much
self-explanatory, and has never worked in the past (so we wouldn't be
breaking anything).
I agree -noprint wouldn't break anything, but, if mh-chart(7) is correct
and I've plucked options from it without error, then there's already
-noprefer -noprepend -nopreserve
so `-nopri' would be needed to be unambiguous if it were to become the
common option across nmh commands. That's tedious, and doesn't
obviously say `be quiet', ending in an `eye' sound, not an `ee', so the
`...nt' would be added anyway.
you kind of lost me in that last bit, but i'll take your word for it. ;-)
i'm fine with the idea of creating a "universal hush" option. but i
don't think i'll hold up actually implementing -noprint, for the
folder command, on the development branch. we can make a new -quiet
or -silent option, and make it synonymous with -noprint, sometime in
the future. how's that?
paul
`-silent' is already used by one command, inc(1). `-s' is naturally
very common, but `-si' is unique.
`-quiet' is also used by one command, burst(1). `-q' isn't unique
because of `-query', solely used by repl(1) for "asking", the man page
says.
POSIX grep(1) has `-q', GNU long form `--quiet'. Searching section 1 of
the man pages suggest `quiet' is the common term. Ignoring the loads of
uncommon commands that use it, there's still many users: git, gpg, less,
passwd, readlink, rsync, script, systemctl, valgrind, wget, and the
compressors -- bzip2, gzip, lzop, etc., all have `-q' for quietness.
`-s' is used by fewer, the old Bell Labs commands: cmp, ed, make, and
tty.
I'd prefer `-q'; as a one-letter option in other commands, it's familiar
for this meaning. `-si' would be an nmh thing. That would either mean
nobbling repl's -query, does anyone use it? :-) Or altering option
parsing to allow a precedence, perhaps just for single letters, so a
command with `-query' and `-quiet' can declare `-q' means shush. I'm
been thinking the option parsing could benefit from `improvement' in
this and other ways for a while.
--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy
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paul fox, pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's -3.6 degrees)
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