The following patch to "test" ties the behavior of "--help" and "--version" to POSIXLY_CORRECT. I don't believe this breaks anything, and if it does it can by fixed by setting the time-honored variable. This will solve the problem of users occasionally being confused by this behavior, which has happened even recently to coreutils developers. See for example:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2015-03/msg00007.htmlProposed ChangeLog entry:
Author: Shawn McMahon <
address@hidden>
Date: Tue May 5 20:32:00 2015 -0400
test: tie --help and --version behavior to POSIXLY_CORRECT
diff --git a/a/src/test.c b/b/src/test.c
index 80cc679..3e73bb9 100644
--- a/a/src/test.c
+++ b/b/src/test.c
@@ -789,6 +789,7 @@ INTEGER may also be -l STRING, which evaluates to the length of STRING.\n\
\n\
NOTE: [ honors the --help and --version options, but test does not.\n\
test treats each of those as it treats any other nonempty STRING.\n\
+If POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, test honors both.\n\
"), stdout);
printf (USAGE_BUILTIN_WARNING, _("test and/or ["));
emit_ancillary_info (PROGRAM_NAME);
@@ -836,12 +837,12 @@ main (int margc, char **margv)
argv = margv;
- if (LBRACKET)
+ if (LBRACKET || getenv ("POSIXLY_CORRECT"))
{
/* Recognize --help or --version, but only when invoked in the
- "[" form, when the last argument is not "]". Use direct
- parsing, rather than parse_long_options, to avoid accepting
- abbreviations. POSIX allows "[ --help" and "[ --version" to
+ "[" form, when the last argument is not "]", or when POSIXLY_CORRECT
+ is set. Use direct parsing, rather than parse_long_options, to avoid
+ accepting abbreviations. POSIX allows "[ --help" and "[ --version" to
have the usual GNU behavior, but it requires "test --help"
and "test --version" to exit silently with status 0. */
if (margc == 2)