Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site unc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!decvax!mcnc!unc!tim 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.