{"id":1752,"date":"2004-10-07T10:52:44","date_gmt":"2004-10-07T14:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=1752"},"modified":"2004-10-07T10:55:38","modified_gmt":"2004-10-07T14:55:38","slug":"more-gnu-smugness-give-me-help-when-i-want-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2004\/10\/07\/more-gnu-smugness-give-me-help-when-i-want-it\/","title":{"rendered":"More Gnu Smugness: Give me help when I want it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following on from the ‘head -n’ debacle<\/a>, here’s another annoying gnuism:
\n
\n$ egrep -h
\nUsage: egrep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...
\nTry `egrep --help' for more information.
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

So I’ve asked it for help, it knows <\/em>I’ve asked it for help, but it insists that I do things its way. The utility has even sequestered the ‘-h’ option to give me this useless message. It would have been much better to call the usage option whether I gave it ‘-h’ or ‘–help’.<\/p>\n

Computers should do what I want, when I want it. In fact, someday soon I want a computer with a DO MY STUFF NOW, LOWLY COMPUTER<\/strong> key, that issues an NMI<\/abbr> to make the computer return to what I want it to do. I think that’s what the Esc<\/em> key was originally for, but all too often, the operating system thinks it has more important things to do than I have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following on from the ‘head -n’ debacle, here’s another annoying gnuism: $ egrep -h Usage: egrep [OPTION]… PATTERN [FILE]… Try `egrep –help’ for more information. So I’ve asked it for help, it knows I’ve asked it for help, but it insists that I do things its way. The utility has even sequestered the ‘-h’ option […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[1131,1841,62,1347],"class_list":["post-1752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck","tag-gnu","tag-help","tag-rant","tag-unix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-sg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}