[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Make ff* recognize ------long-gnu-options

[Måns Rullgård]

Rodney Baker <rodney.baker at iinet.net.au> writes:

> On Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:21:31 Stefano Sabatini wrote:
>> On date Monday 2009-12-14 01:28:06 +0100, Michael Niedermayer encoded:
>> > On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 07:00:48PM +0100, Stefano Sabatini wrote:
>> > > Hi, I don't know if skipping an undeterminated number of '-' is a
>> > > misfeature but was easy to implement and I find it quite funny to run
>> > > ffmpeg ------------------help, we can reduce the number of skipped '-'
>> > > to 2 if requested.
>> > >
>> > > Patches attached.
>> >
>> > I agree that this is funny but i think it does little good ...
>> > it could confuse people and scripts could become dependant on it and then
>> > we cant even remove it wihout pissing people off.
>> 
>> So what about to accept at least both -foo and --foo options?
>> [..]
>
> Pardon me for butting in (I'm usually only an interested observer on this 
> list) but wouldn't it be better to stick to the normally accepted convention 
> of -f (short option) or --foo (long option) (remembering of course that not 
> every short option necessarily has a matching long option and vice versa)?
>
> Having it behave the same as other GNU/Linux apps makes things much
> easier to remember, especially when scripting.

There are many apps that do not follow that style.  Examples include
all the traditional X utilities.  Imagemagick also comes to mind.

I see no reason whatsoever to change the existing syntax of FFmpeg.

-- 
M?ns Rullg?rd
mans at mansr.com