From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: Git documentation consistency
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:34:01 -0800
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To: "Greg A. Woods" <woods@planix.com>
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"Greg A. Woods" <woods@planix.com> writes:

> 	$ ls -?
> 	ls: unknown option -- ?
> 	usage: ls [-AaBbCcdFfghikLlmnopqRrSsTtuWwx1] [file ...]
> ...
> Most other commands know '-?', and despite
> the silliness with GNU Ls, use of '-?' to request summary usage
> information is pretty much a de facto standard for unix commands.

I think you are showing ignorance here, as -? is *not* even close to
standard, nor even widely used practice at all.  I somehow doubt your ls
would respond to "ls -X" any differently from "ls -?", but is giving the
same canned response to any unknown option.

The "usage: ls [-AaBbC...] [file...]" indeed is much better than abstract
"usage: frotz <options> <args>" that does not list what <options> are, but
that is a totally different thing.  On that point, I think Peff already
made a good suggestion of giving the full help text in such a case.