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From: tim@unc.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: net.unix,net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: + - and = in option strings
Message-ID: <6940@unc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Mar-84 14:30:36 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.6940
Posted: Mon Mar 19 14:30:36 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Mar-84 06:00:47 EST
References: <136@looking.UUCP>
Organization: CS Dept., U. of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lines: 18

While we're on the subject of command-line syntax:

Has anyone else noted that 4.2bsd uses the pound sign ("#") as an option to
several commands, for instance, lpr(1)?  How dumb can you get?  Both csh and
sh scripts will consider the pound sign to begin a comment, so not only will
your "#" option get zapped, so will all other options after it the line, and
the program will probably interpret the "-" left over as meaning to use the
standard input as an input file argument.

I was really surprised to see this silliness in what is supposedly a
production-quality project written by people experienced with UNIX (which is
[repeat after me] a trademark of Bell Labs [or whatever it's called now]).
--
Tim Maroney, The Censored Hacker
mcnc!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@csnet-relay (ARPA)

All opinions expressed herein are completely my own, so don't go assuming
that anyone else at UNC feels the same way.