5 ms·

I was surprised to read that long options were invented so recently, in only 1990.

tyingq 6y ago
Pretty sure some programs used them before 1990, just not with a convenient getopt_long(). I know it's not the best example, but 'dd' used things like "if=whatever skip=123" prior to 1990. The article also mentions find, but it used single dash long options.
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  I think the "find" command was around before then, and it has long options. For example: find dir -type f -name "*.h" -print
  - tzs 6y ago
    Those aren't really options. The syntax of the find command is find <options> <paths> <expression> Those thing you list are part of the <expression> part of the command. The <options> part in BSD find, and I believe GNU find, only uses options of the form -X where X is a single character. It's a little confusing because the man pages for both BSD and GNU find do call some of the things that appear in the <expression> part of the command "options".
  - macintux 6y ago
    Find is specifically called out in the article. > There were a few programs that ran on Unix systems and used long option names starting with either - or no prefix at all, such as find, but those syntaxes were not compatible with Unix getopt() and were parsed by ad-hoc code.
- tyingq 6y ago
  Found an example that's a bit closer, from Minix 1.0, 1987. The "pr" program: Usage: pr [+page] [-columns] [-h header] [-w with] [-l length] [-nt] [files] Mixed in this case, with -columns and +page, and all hand parsed. But long options nonetheless.
  - toast0 6y ago
    Isn't that expecting say pr +4 -172 to format for printing starting at page 4, on a wide 172 colunn paper?
    - tyingq 6y ago
      Ah, yes, you're right...
adrianmonk 6y ago
I think what's recent is the syntax for mixing short and long options together on the same command. Some commands had long options, some had short, but with "--" one command can have both.
haolez 6y ago
Well... at that time, paper terminals were still in use in some places. The gap between legacy and modern hardware that was in operation was huge.

Pretty sure some programs used them before 1990, just not with a convenient getopt_long(). I know it's not the best example, but 'dd' used things like "if=whatever skip=123" prior to 1990. The article also mentions find, but it used single dash long options.

adrianmonk 6y ago
I think the "find" command was around before then, and it has long options. For example: find dir -type f -name "*.h" -print
- tzs 6y ago
  Those aren't really options. The syntax of the find command is find <options> <paths> <expression> Those thing you list are part of the <expression> part of the command. The <options> part in BSD find, and I believe GNU find, only uses options of the form -X where X is a single character. It's a little confusing because the man pages for both BSD and GNU find do call some of the things that appear in the <expression> part of the command "options".
- macintux 6y ago
  Find is specifically called out in the article. > There were a few programs that ran on Unix systems and used long option names starting with either - or no prefix at all, such as find, but those syntaxes were not compatible with Unix getopt() and were parsed by ad-hoc code.
tyingq 6y ago
Found an example that's a bit closer, from Minix 1.0, 1987. The "pr" program: Usage: pr [+page] [-columns] [-h header] [-w with] [-l length] [-nt] [files] Mixed in this case, with -columns and +page, and all hand parsed. But long options nonetheless.
- toast0 6y ago
  Isn't that expecting say pr +4 -172 to format for printing starting at page 4, on a wide 172 colunn paper?
  - tyingq 6y ago
    Ah, yes, you're right...

adrianmonk 6y ago

I think what's recent is the syntax for mixing short and long options together on the same command. Some commands had long options, some had short, but with "--" one command can have both.

haolez 6y ago

Well... at that time, paper terminals were still in use in some places. The gap between legacy and modern hardware that was in operation was huge.