Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ucbvax!husc6!hscfvax!mohamed From: mohamed@hscfvax.harvard.edu (Mohamed_el_Lozy) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Command interfaces Message-ID: <489@hscfvax.harvard.edu> Date: 15 Dec 87 23:42:31 GMT References: <432@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> <57900005@ccvaxa> <22179@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Reply-To: mohamed@hscfvax.UUCP (Mohamed_el_Lozy) Organization: Health Sciences Computing Facility, Harvard University Lines: 25 Posted: Tue Dec 15 18:42:31 1987 In article <22179@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> bostic@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Keith Bostic) writes: >> > Henry Spencer on getopt(): >> > Why don't people use getopt >> > more? Because the interface to getopt is a little complicated and it is >> > hard to get it right when you are typing a program in from scratch. (For > >If the interface to the program is reasonably well defined, i.e. it follows >the rules laid down in S5, it's not tough at all. Just put the following 14 >lines in a file in some directory, copy them in and edit as needed. It just >doesn't get any easier, this side of 4th GL's. > It can (and perhaps should) be made even easier. A year or so ago I posted a program to the non-moderated sources group called mkprog that would take (too many) arguments and produce the getopt(3) switch, together with declaring the flags as suitable variables and many other things. Looking in ~pub on j.cc.purdue.edu I found a similar program called, as I recall, mkcmd which allowed even more specification of exactly what you want. I believe that it has not been posted yet. Complex interfaces can, and should, be made simpler by putting a suitable wrapper around them.