bug#33468: A bug with yes and --help

[Pádraig Brady]

On 22/11/18 10:09, Uko Kokņevičs wrote:
> So I was messing around with `yes`, and after running `yes --help me` it
> output this:
> 
>> yes: unrecognized option '--help'
>> Try 'yes --help' for more information.
> 
> After a bit of more testing of this, I found the same reaction from
> `whoami`.  I believe this might be because both `yes` and `whoami` only
> ever accept one option -- that being `--help` or `--version`, and it
> says that it doesn't know what `--version` is when run with an extra
> operand as well.  However, `true` or `false` doesn't give a textual
> error, but they completely ignore the option:
> 
>> $ /usr/bin/true --version
>> true (GNU coreutils) 8.30
>> Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>> License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
> <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
>> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
>> There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
>>
>> Written by Jim Meyering.
>> $ /usr/bin/true --version asd
>> $ echo $?
>> 0
> 
> Suggested possible fixes:
> 1.  A more general error message, e.g., `yes` only accepts one option or
> none.
> 2.  Ignore the stuff that follows the option, making `yes --help me` act
> the same as `yes --help`, which kind of matches with other shell
> commands in that they print help, ignore the rest of arguments and exit.
> 3.  Ignore the option: `yes --help me` would use "--help me" as the
> string to repeat.
> 
> The third one isn't really a good one, but it exists as an idea so I'm
> marking it down.

Yes this isn't ideal
yes uses parse_long_options from gnulib which only processes
options if there is a single option specified.

I see the message got a little more confusing since:
https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=commitdiff;h=v8.28-42-g5782a36
changing from unrecognized option '-', to unrecognized option '--help'
Commands that use parse_long_options() are:

  cksum dd echo expr getlimits hostid hostname link logname nohup printf
  sleep test tsort unlink uptime users whoami yes

thanks
Pádraig