commandline help

[Marc Lehmann]

bad: gcc -? doesn't give reasonable output.

I have a patch that will enable gcc/g++/g77 to have a help switch:
cerebro:~# gcc -?
gcc: unrecognized option -?'
gcc: No input files, try "gcc --help"

the --help switch can print an explanation to every commandline switch etc...

on unix, this is not much of a problem (although the manpage is really
out of date, and many people look only at the manpage), but under other
os's like DOS or OS/2, commandline help is either very customary,
or much easier than to start an external help viewer, thus interrupting
all your work (esp. under dos)

it can be enabled with configure --enable-clh.. the patch needs some tuning,
but it was tested in pgcc for some time..

is it possible to have it included into egcs someday? I can sent it in for review
in a few days, maybe weeks, depending on when it is fixed.

(so this mail is only to "poll" wether this would be a useful addition).

Thanks,
Marc

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