Re: Bug#295328: general: Help messages to stderr should be banned

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

"Francesco P. Lovergine" <frankie@debian.org> schrieb:

> On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 07:38:08AM -0600, John Hasler wrote:
>> Francesco P. Lovergine writes:
>> > It depends on programs, sometimes the same usage function is used for
>> > either --help or invalid options.
>> 
>> Sure, but the output should still be directed correctly.
>
> Quite difficult if the function is the same. In both cases it uses stderr.

#!/bin/sh

usage(){
  if [ "$1" = "STDERR" ]; then 
    EXITCODE=1
    exec >&2; 
  else
      EXITCODE=0
  fi
  echo "bla..."
  exit $EXITCODE
}

case "$1" in
     --help|-h|-help)
       usage;;
     --foo)
      ...
     *)
       usage STDERR;;
esac

Translation to Perl, Python, C, whatever, and to multiple arguments is
left to the reader as an afternoon exercise.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer