On 2022-12-20 20:43, Bart Schaefer wrote:
In this particular case (as you noted) there's an entire other section already dedicated to the single-letter options that can be manipulatedYabut they sent you to the head of an entire nother section of the manual. Avoiding an entire block of duplication could be OK but say something like: "There are many other 'set' switches that are duplicated in/for the 'setopt' command (q.v.) which you can read just below this entry."
Ah! Another thing I missed. It's far from clear that they're even talking about single-letter options. Why not say that? I spent about two hours reading, experimenting, re-writing, trying to get every bit of information out of that page and I missed 'set -A' (by itself) and single letter options entirely. Not to be too whiny but 'set' is a dogs breakfast of bad design. It is a bizarre bazaar of bits and pieces of semi-related functionality rather like a junk-shop or a gypsy camp. It's like jazz -- don't ask for a definition.with "set" and another for the long names for "set -o".
It might have been nice to be consistent about what was an "option" and what was a "flag" or a "switch", but those terms are thrown around colloquially with interpretation expected from context.
More than nice. As discussed, manuals are not really focused on being helpful, but they should be absolutely consistent. Perhaps a bit of literary license is welcome in a paragraph of exposition, but in a synopsis, if the word is 'flag' then stick with flag throughout. I like 'switch' myself but that's DOSey. (A flag is a variable used to communicate some bit of information between one part of code an another IMHO.) Nope, the entire Linux word (no doubt UNIX too but I've never touched it) should be ashamed of itself for it's abominable documentation. Our manual is far from the worst.