notes@ucbcad.UUCP (10/06/83)
#N:ucbesvax:25800001:000:1371 ucbesvax!turner Sep 5 22:30:00 1983 I have long been an advocate of standardizing UNIX man entries so as to factilitate the following commands: 1) makewhatflags - run by superrotorooters to update flags-files entries; these could be kept in /usr/man/flags, or some such. 2) flags <cmd> - list the flags (more'ing if need be) of the given command <cmd>. (Or, optionally, "options <cmd>".) If the command given as argument didn't happen to exist, "flags" would write to stderr: "No dice, dummy." Or something equally appropriate. :-) "flags <cmd> [+-][flag] . . . " would only detail (perhaps in a longer format) the meaning of the flags given. The main requirement is a willingness on the part of man-page writers or maintainers to submit existing and future documentation to a common regime with respect to command line options. The actual format would depend somewhat on the intelligence of the commands proposed. If a reasonable de facto standard could be agreed upon, makewhatflags and flags could themselves be the enforcers--anyone straying from the standard will simply have to put up with users complaining bitterly that "flags" doesn't work for their nifty syntax. (This could equally be a complaint against the "flags" command itself--there is a co-evolutionary balance point to be struck somewhere. Nothing new for UNIX, certainly.) Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)