@drewdevault @gloopsies @m0xee @phel Do you mean by POSIX?
Regardless, there is a difference between a standard saying not to accept any arguments (which would arguably be worse) and not saying that it must accept such and such arguments.
Either way, standards are not laws. GNU wants uniformity in their code, so all programmes take --help and --version commands, and they are free to do so.
I never understood why some people are so irritated by this.
@pkal @drewdevault @gloopsies @m0xee @phel Okay why can't it just be `exit(0)`?
@noodlez1232 @drewdevault @gloopsies @m0xee @phel I am afraid I don't understand what you are trying to ask? It can be just that (as seen in other operating systems), but as "smallest C file" is not the only metric, and certainly not the metric used by GNU, the priorities are different.
@pkal @noodlez1232 @drewdevault @gloopsies @phel
True — I don't think that terminating with zero irregardless of being unable to write to a file is a good idea as you asked the program to print its version — and it couldn't, it failed — the program failed to accomplish what you specifically requested. Removing the options and just doing "exit(0)" might be a way to solve that, but obviously it's not what GNU wants — they want uniformity, for all the utilities to have these options 🤷
