I am a fan of these routines, and use the regularly, but I didn’t write them. Message by ches. Tappos by iPad. > On Jul 10, 2018, at 9:50 PM, Noel Hunt wrote: > > I'm surprised why anyone would bother with these routines > anymore, given the startling simplicity of Plan9's arg(3). > One stands in awe of such simplicity. I believe it was > William Cheswick who designed it, but I may be wrong. > > >> On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 5:25 PM wrote: >> RFS vs. NFS and sockets vs. STREAMS were much more serious; they were >> about the directions Unix would take going forward, where interoperability >> (RFS/NFS) and code portability (sockets/STREAMS) were big either/or issues. >> >> Had AT&T been smarter about its licensing, both RFS and STREAMS might >> have "won", but they weren't, and those technologies have all but >> disappeared. >> >> GNU getopt can be used in a source-compatible way with POSIX getopt; >> having long options is up to the programmer. I agree, there were >> aesthetic arguments, altough long options have mostly "won". I'm about >> as long-time a Unix aficianado as anyone else here, and for many things >> I find long options easier to remember than short ones. >> >> (To their credit, at least initially, the GNU project asked its developers >> to use the same long options in all programs for operations that were >> the same.) >> >> Arnold >> >> >> George Michaelson wrote: >> >> > ... and then somebody GNUified it. I seem to recall three huge >> > flamewars in UUCP days: RFS vs NFS, STREAMS (the original) vs sockets, >> > and getopt >> > >> > --no -noo --nooo=please --dont-make-me=do-that >> > >> > On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 3:54 PM, wrote: >> > > Clem Cole wrote: >> > > >> > >> BY the time dmr adds stdio, it was >> > >> still early enough in the life to displace the randomness for something as >> > >> important as I/O, whereas lack of use of something.like getopt would not >> > >> become clearly deficient until after widespread success. >> > > >> > > I think "widespread access" is more like it for getopt. Getopt dates >> > > to 1980; it was in System III (I just checked). That's only about two years >> > > after V7 which was circa 1978. >> > > >> > > Here are the dates: >> > > >> > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 1073 Apr 11 1980 usr/src/lib/libc/pdp11/gen/getopt.c >> > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 2273 May 16 1980 usr/src/man/man3/getopt.3c >> > > >> > > But the world outside the Bell System didn't have System III. Getopt >> > > didn't become "popular" until System V or so, and became much easier to >> > > adopt once Henry Spencer published his public domain rewrite of the code >> > > and man page. >> > > >> > > Just a nit, (:-) >> > > >> > > Arnold