[Gnu-arch-users] Re: tla bash completion

[Miles Bader]

Tom Lord <address@hidden> writes:
>     > At least with the -v method, there are no arguments to the option; it
>     > just counts the number of time the option occurs.
> 
> Ok, that doesn't violate an Official Standard but it still interacts
> poorly with aliases, scripting, and so forth.  
> 
> Why count occurences of an option rather than given an option argument
> which is an integer?

Well I can't speak for the people who use this technique (I never have),
but I imagine it's because it's annoying to have to give an argument
when it's the same 90% of the time.  The `multiple options' technique
gives you a similar effect to an optional option argument without
actually having one (even if the Official Standard says optional
arguments are bad, users would still like to have them sometimes).
It's also very simple to implement even with very basic option-parsing
schemes.

[As someone else said, I think there's not much point to getting very
worried over whether debugging options are very clean or not...]

-Miles
-- 
`...the Soviet Union was sliding in to an economic collapse so comprehensive
 that in the end its factories produced not goods but bads: finished products
 less valuable than the raw materials they were made from.'  [The Economist]