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Re: Can I get a hint, please?


From: Eric Blake
Subject: Re: Can I get a hint, please?
Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 11:01:21 -0600
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According to Bruce Korb on 10/7/2006 8:09 AM:
> That got me thinking.  csh/bash have this cute feature of giving
> hints when the tab key is pressed.  Programs nowadays are elf
> and elf allows for arbitrary sections to be added into a binary
> that won't affect the execution.  Suppose, for example, there
> were a section named, ".options" and it contained a magic number
> to ensure the right version of the right thing were being looked
> at.  Now if someone presses "tab" after the command name you could
> actually emit real usage text.  :)  Further, in answer to David's
> auto-reordering suggestion, with that option the arguments can
> be scanned and you'll know if the ``-l'' flag takes an argument
> or not and, thus, be able to correctly reorder.

Bash already has programmable tab completion, although I'm not sure if you
would be able to hook argument reordering into it easily.  But PLEASE
don't assume the entire world is elf.  Bash is ported to a number of
non-elf platforms, such as PE-COFF of Windows.  Hooking in a readline
command that examines the command enough to know which options take
arguments so that reordering will not change the semantics of the command
sounds admirable, but doing so by parsing the target executable just does
not sound like the right approach to me.  We don't need to bloat bash by
adding all of the binutils capabilities into it.

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             ebb9@byu.net
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