Re: Specifying command line arguments in a file?

[Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs dot mu dot oz dot au>]

On 30-Apr-2001, DJ Delorie <dj@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com> writes:
> > We need to bite the bullet and implement -@.  In fact, we should do it
> 
> If you do this, please adopt the convention that borland, djgpp, and
> cygwin use.  DJGPP has been using it for over twelve years, so I know
> adopting it won't cause unexpected problems.  Note: djgpp and cygwin
> do this to *all* programs, not just gcc.
> 
> The convention is: If an argument begins with '@' and the rest of the
> argument is a valid existing file name, arguments are read from the
> file (ws-delimited) and inserted into the command line.  If the '@'
> isn't followed by a valid existing filename, the argument with the '@'
> is left as-is.

If the arguments in the file are whitespace-delimited,
what do you do about arguments containing whitespace?

If the *expected* problems include an inability to handle
arguments containing whitespace, then I don't think it
would be a good idea to adopt this scheme unchanged,
even if it has been in use for many years ;-)

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
                                    |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.