Re: [dev] stest review

From: Christoph Lohmann <20h_AT_r-36.net>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:04:43 +0100

Hello.

Anselm R Garbe wrote:
> However the real point is that the getopt() style or ARGBEGIN crap
> enables and encourages the developer to introduce a bad command flag
> interface. Because those approaches hide the utter complexity
> involved, the developer tends to care less here. This is my main
> argument against getopt() or ARGBEGIN.
>
> If you can write a simple for() loop to process your command line
> flags, your interface can't be that hard to grasp for the user.
> Otherwise he will look up the weirdo flags quite often in your man
> file and develop hate against your tool over time ;)

That is plain wrong. The ARGBEGIN { } ARGEND; style is easy to read
and adds all the convenience you want in flag parsing. On the other
side getopt() adds a huge dependency.

The suckless standard library should include either the ARG* macros
or add another function, which can be put into the switch() state-
ment.

Users will rather be irritated, if the commandline argument hand-
ling is different in every application. They then *have* to read
the sourcecode for finding out how arguments are handled.


Sincerely,

Christoph Lohmman
Received on Sat Feb 11 2012 - 14:04:43 CET