4 ms·

Wait what? It would never occur to me to try to use a question mark as a command option at all. That's what "--help" is for. I'm actually surprised any program

Wait what? It would never occur to me to try to use a question mark as a command option at all. That's what "--help" is for. I'm actually surprised any program at all recognizes either form of the question mark. ... but don't get me started on people who think it's ok to use a single hyphen to start a multicharacter option, or don't let you put multiple single character options after the single hyphen...

nneonneo 3y ago
Windows uses /? as the standard help flag, so maybe there are tools that are ported from that convention? -h/--help are all I ever see in macOS CLI tools, in any case.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I believe /? started well before Windows, with DOS. IIRC, it was used because -? was common with Unix and CP/M (and DOS is basically half Unix and half CP/M) -- but Microsoft made the decision to have '/' be the switch character rather than '-'. So, /? was inherited from what came before, just slightly modified.
JohnFen 3y ago
> It would never occur to me to try to use a question mark as a command option at all. That's what "--help" is for. -? has been a common switch for decades. I've been implementing it (along with the synonyms -h, --help, etc.) in all of my programs since about the '90s.
bvisness 3y ago
Anything a user tries to do to ask for help is correct behavior that you need to support. It is a crime to tell the user “you asked for help incorrectly”. I suggest supporting at least all of the following: -h, -help, --help, -?, /h, /?, help, <no flag> (if possible). Other flags don’t have to follow these rules, but I think help can be an exception. And maybe you should print the help any time the user enters a bad command.
- Hizonner 3y ago
  Just to be clear, I'm not saying programs shouldn't provide help in response to "`-?`". It sounds like a good idea to me, because that would be an obvious guess for what a user would mean by putting a question mark there. And, as you say, some help is a good response to any unrecognized option. I'm just saying that I hadn't realized programs did that. And I've been around a long, long time. I guess I'm just blind.
HKH2 3y ago
> ... but don't get me started on people who think it's ok to use a single hyphen to start a multicharacter option There are quite a few older programs that do that, including ImageMagick and FFmpeg.
- Hizonner 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure slavery was also going on when those programs started doing that. Doing it now is kind of different...

nneonneo 3y ago

Windows uses /? as the standard help flag, so maybe there are tools that are ported from that convention? -h/--help are all I ever see in macOS CLI tools, in any case.

JohnFen 3y ago
I believe /? started well before Windows, with DOS. IIRC, it was used because -? was common with Unix and CP/M (and DOS is basically half Unix and half CP/M) -- but Microsoft made the decision to have '/' be the switch character rather than '-'. So, /? was inherited from what came before, just slightly modified.

JohnFen 3y ago

> It would never occur to me to try to use a question mark as a command option at all. That's what "--help" is for. -? has been a common switch for decades. I've been implementing it (along with the synonyms -h, --help, etc.) in all of my programs since about the '90s.

bvisness 3y ago

Anything a user tries to do to ask for help is correct behavior that you need to support. It is a crime to tell the user “you asked for help incorrectly”. I suggest supporting at least all of the following: -h, -help, --help, -?, /h, /?, help, <no flag> (if possible). Other flags don’t have to follow these rules, but I think help can be an exception. And maybe you should print the help any time the user enters a bad command.

Hizonner 3y ago
Just to be clear, I'm not saying programs shouldn't provide help in response to "`-?`". It sounds like a good idea to me, because that would be an obvious guess for what a user would mean by putting a question mark there. And, as you say, some help is a good response to any unrecognized option. I'm just saying that I hadn't realized programs did that. And I've been around a long, long time. I guess I'm just blind.

HKH2 3y ago

> ... but don't get me started on people who think it's ok to use a single hyphen to start a multicharacter option There are quite a few older programs that do that, including ImageMagick and FFmpeg.

Hizonner 3y ago
I'm pretty sure slavery was also going on when those programs started doing that. Doing it now is kind of different...