Re: Move command line options to start of line

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Oct 7,  1:02pm, Peter Stephenson wrote:
}
} > zsh% ls -s file1 file2 -l
} > 
} > the result of the command should be
} > 
} > zsh% ls -s -l file1 file2
} > 
} > and not
} > 
} > zsh% ls -l -s file1 file2
} 
} Why?

Because I didn't give a complete example.

Suppose instead that it's

zsh% ls -s *1 *3 -l

Then the result is supposed to be

zsh% ls -s -l -- *1 *3

I.e., you must know where to insert the "--" because you don't know
whether *1 is going to return something beginning with a "-", and if
you know where to put the "--" you know what to put to its left.

(Remember, I'm channeling Korn here, I don't necessarily *agree* that
this is a good idea in the first place.)

The counter-argument (Andrey's point) is that if the example is

zsh% ls -s file1 *2 -l

you don't know if file1 is an option-argument (to -s) or an operand,
so without knowing the semantics of "ls -s" you can't know where to
put the "--".

I haven't bothered disputing Korn on this; I suspect the answer is that
POSIX declares that option-arguments may appear in the same shell word
as the option, so if you cared about POSIX in the first place and you
meant "-s file1" to be a unit then you should already have been writing

zsh% ls -sfile1 *2

and now there's no ambiguity of this type:

} Consider (example contrived on the spur of the moment, but not wholly
} unrealistic):
} 
}   su -c 'rm -f .zshrc' username -l

But does

    su -c'rm -f .zshrc' username

work in a true POSIX shell?  Is it required to?