[Pkg-gpm-devel] Bug#288610: gpm: improve command line handling (inconsistent)

[Peter Samuelson]

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[Jari]
> Gpm accepts options 90 % of the tim in standard format "-OPTION
> PARAM", but following options are inconsistent in their usage
> compared to other options:

That's because -A, -R and -V can be used with or without arguments:

  -A means the same as -A0
  -R means the same as -Rmsc
  -V means the same as -V1

I hate this convention for the same reason you do: it causes confusion.
I don't like it in "perl -i" and I don't like it here.  However,
changing anything risks breaking an append= line somewhere.  And
there's the small matter of being command-line-compatible with upstream
(read: Least Surprise for new users from other distributions).

It would almost be possible to detect whether the following parameter
looks like its own argument or appears to belong to the -A/-R/-V.
However, there is no way to disambiguate the case of "-V -2".

Thanks for the report,
Peter

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