[Haskell-cafe] Command-line options idea

[geremy condra]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 3:45 AM, Robin Green <greenrd at greenrd.org> wrote:
> This is not in any way specific to Haskell, but I know a number of
> packages on Hackage have executables with command-line options, so:
>
> The non-Haskell program get_iplayer has an excellent idea for
> command-line options parsing. Rather than having to remember two
> separate syntaxes, one for command line options and one for a
> preferences file, the user can simply type
>
> get_iplayer --prefs-add --OPTION[=VALUE]
>
> which will add the equivalent of --OPTION[=VALUE] to the get_iplayer
> preferences file (and do nothing else). So it's like a special
> "preferences file manipulation mode" of the program.
>
> There are also the following options, as described by --help:
>
>  --prefs-clear                    Remove *ALL* saved user or preset options
>  --prefs-del                      Remove specified saved user or preset options
>  --prefs-show                     Show saved user or preset options
>
> (This also means that the user doesn't have to remember the filename
> of the preferences file.)
>
> I think this sort of thing would be a good idea for *any* program
> that has command-line options that some user might want to hold
> constant across several runs.
>
> --
> Robin

Good idea, thanks for mentioning it.

Geremy Condra