4 ms·

The double-dash is selected for pure practicality. Any option character excludes a set of inputs, and we want this set to be as small as possible. It is alread

by theamk 5y ago

The double-dash is selected for pure practicality. Any option character excludes a set of inputs, and we want this set to be as small as possible. It is already hard to look at file named "-f" -- do you want to also make accessing files named ":f" (or even worse, "f:") harder? Thus the desire to keep the first "-". Now, they could have used "-:" or "-=" for long options.. but I think "--" won because it is so easy to type -- no need to move your fingers. Using long options to encode DSL, like imagemagick and ffmpeg, can be pretty silly.. But those programs are exceptions, and most of the option usage is of much simpler variety. Like "grep --label=input --color=always". The comments about es sound weird... You can set ";" as prompt in sh/bash too. I would not call its quoting "nicer" -- yes, using '' for a single quote is nice, but lack of " support sounds like a bad omission. Yes, bash is pretty fat by 1990's standards.. but if you want a real programming language with no line editing capabilities, no need to reach for obscure shells -- grab perl, python, tcl, lua or any of the other scripting languages.

onetom 5y ago
I understand, that the double-dash was a logical step from a single-dash. My problem is, what we ended up with, is really not great. It's a typical case of the slowly boiled frog... rc and es is an good example of what improvements can be achieved, if we challenge historical decisions and get rid of the not so great ones. The "; " prompt was just a historical side-note, because I saw someone asking about it the other day on twitter: https://twitter.com/thingskatedid/status/1316081075043463170?s=20&t=qrIP_XbAikNdNrFgKDJ5eQ https://twitter.com/thingskatedid/status/1316081075043463170... By the quoting rules, I meant, that if you have a variable (eg v='a b') with a value containing whitespace, when you reference it ($v), then you don't have to worry about quoting it in any way, because the space in its value won't cause any problems.
onetom 5y ago
btw, Rebol solved the mixing of options and filenames by introducing a syntax for file references; u prefix them with a percent sign, eg.: %/c/plug-in/video.r %//sound/goldfinger.mp3 %"/c/program files/qualcomm/eudora mail/out.mbx" %c:/docs/file.txt %\some\cool\movie.mpg <= understood backslashes too, so it worked in DOS/Windows too! %cool%20movie%20clip.mpg Source: http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-12.html#section-2.1 http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-12.html#section-2... then you could mix them with `:get-words` and `set-words:`. Rebol also had an interesting take on options - with and without arguments -; it called them refinements and you would just stack them with slashes onto the "command". the refinement arguments were added to the end of the parameter list though, so it was not exactly obvious which argument belonged to which refinement, but in practice it worked quite nice, surprisingly: str: "test" insert/dup/part str "this one" 4 5 print str => this this this this test and reversing /dup and /part: str: "test" insert/part/dup str "this one" 4 5 print str => thisthisthisthisthistest Source: http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-9.html#section-2.3 http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-9.html#section-2....

by theamk 5y ago

onetom 5y ago

I understand, that the double-dash was a logical step from a single-dash. My problem is, what we ended up with, is really not great. It's a typical case of the slowly boiled frog... rc and es is an good example of what improvements can be achieved, if we challenge historical decisions and get rid of the not so great ones. The "; " prompt was just a historical side-note, because I saw someone asking about it the other day on twitter: https://twitter.com/thingskatedid/status/1316081075043463170?s=20&t=qrIP_XbAikNdNrFgKDJ5eQ https://twitter.com/thingskatedid/status/1316081075043463170... By the quoting rules, I meant, that if you have a variable (eg v='a b') with a value containing whitespace, when you reference it ($v), then you don't have to worry about quoting it in any way, because the space in its value won't cause any problems.

onetom 5y ago

btw, Rebol solved the mixing of options and filenames by introducing a syntax for file references; u prefix them with a percent sign, eg.: %/c/plug-in/video.r %//sound/goldfinger.mp3 %"/c/program files/qualcomm/eudora mail/out.mbx" %c:/docs/file.txt %\some\cool\movie.mpg <= understood backslashes too, so it worked in DOS/Windows too! %cool%20movie%20clip.mpg Source: http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-12.html#section-2.1 http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-12.html#section-2... then you could mix them with `:get-words` and `set-words:`. Rebol also had an interesting take on options - with and without arguments -; it called them refinements and you would just stack them with slashes onto the "command". the refinement arguments were added to the end of the parameter list though, so it was not exactly obvious which argument belonged to which refinement, but in practice it worked quite nice, surprisingly: str: "test" insert/dup/part str "this one" 4 5 print str => this this this this test and reversing /dup and /part: str: "test" insert/part/dup str "this one" 4 5 print str => thisthisthisthisthistest Source: http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-9.html#section-2.3 http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-9.html#section-2....