From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:42777) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SoHmN-0006dh-Ai for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:29:48 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SoHmL-0008Dw-Hm for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:29:46 -0400 Received: from v220110690675601.yourvserver.net ([78.47.199.172]:42116) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SoHmL-0008Do-B8 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:29:45 -0400 Message-ID: <4FFB1506.8000008@weilnetz.de> Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:29:42 +0200 From: Stefan Weil MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20120708171618.6082.1347.malonedeb@gac.canonical.com> <20120708194431.821.97538.malone@wampee.canonical.com> <20120709082700.GC16198@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <20120709082700.GC16198@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [Bug 1022331] Re: -cpu ? causes confusion when directory has 1-character length filenames List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Bug 1022331 <1022331@bugs.launchpad.net> Cc: qemu-devel@nongnu.org Am 09.07.2012 10:27, schrieb Daniel Berrange: > On Sun, Jul 08, 2012 at 11:45:34PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote: >> On 8 July 2012 20:44, Michael Tokarev<1022331@bugs.launchpad.net> wrote: >>> Please take this to your shell. The queston mark is a metacharacter for >>> any *nix shell, you should just quote or backslash it. The same >>> question mark is not special on windows. >> >> I think it's a legitimate complaint to say that this is not fantastically >> friendly UI on QEMU's part though. (I've been bitten by it myself and >> I've been dealing with Bourne shells for over a decade.), Picking a >> string that requires metacharacter-quoting in the major shell most >> people use is just a silly choice. >> >> I've thought before that we ought to make sure we have synonyms (eg 'help') >> for all the list things that currently want '?'. Then we could mark '?' >> as deprecated or present for back-compatibility only. I fully agree. > > Or just introduce another character as an alternative to '?', eg '-' > or even accept the string 'help' eg "-cpu help" > > Daniel What about "--cpu [list|help|?]"? It is already possible to use "--cpu ?anystring" because the code only tests the first character, but I don't know whether that was intentional. As Peter already wrote, there are more options which support '?' today (e.g. the list of ethernet NICs), and all should use a similar syntax. Regards Stefan W. PS. I'd also deprecate long command line options starting with a single '-'.