On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 3:45 AM, Robin Green
This is not in any way specific to Haskell, but I know a number of packages on Hackage have executables with command-line options, so:
The non-Haskell program get_iplayer has an excellent idea for command-line options parsing. Rather than having to remember two separate syntaxes, one for command line options and one for a preferences file, the user can simply type
get_iplayer --prefs-add --OPTION[=VALUE]
which will add the equivalent of --OPTION[=VALUE] to the get_iplayer preferences file (and do nothing else). So it's like a special "preferences file manipulation mode" of the program.
There are also the following options, as described by --help:
--prefs-clear Remove *ALL* saved user or preset options --prefs-del Remove specified saved user or preset options --prefs-show Show saved user or preset options
(This also means that the user doesn't have to remember the filename of the preferences file.)
I think this sort of thing would be a good idea for *any* program that has command-line options that some user might want to hold constant across several runs.
-- Robin
Good idea, thanks for mentioning it. Geremy Condra