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Re: [PATCH] Re: Incorrect usage shouldn't give a long help message

From: Julian Foad <julianfoad_at_btopenworld.com>
Date: 2005-11-15 13:45:58 CET

Julian Foad wrote:
>
> On argument-parsing errors, don't print help, just an error message.
> The errors in question are mainly for too few or too many arguments.

Committed in 17349.

>
> Printing help may be more helpful to a novice in the short term, but in the
> long term it gives a false sense of security, causing users to develop a bad
> habit. It's bad because not all commands print help when invoked without
> arguments. Also, when invoking the command accidentally without arguments
> (perhaps giving as an argument an environment variable which was accidentally
> undefined), printing a long help message is annoying. Also it makes a
> compatibility problem if we want to extend a command to have an argument-free
> form in the future.
>
> * subversion/clients/cmdline/main.c (main):
> Don't replace a generic argument-parsing error with help.
>
> * subversion/clients/cmdline/merge-cmd.c (svn_cl__merge):
> * subversion/svnadmin/main.c (main):
> * subversion/svndumpfilter/main.c (main):
> * subversion/svnlook/main.c (main):
> Don't augment argument-parsing errors with help.

- Julian

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Received on Tue Nov 15 13:49:57 2005

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