What should Python apps do when asked to show help?

Mon May 2 02:34:13 EDT 2016

On 5/1/2016 9:48 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Mon, 2 May 2016 03:04 am, Grant Edwards wrote:
>>> On 2016年05月01日, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2 May 2016 02:30 am, Grant Edwards wrote:
>>>>>>>> In discussions like these, it would be important to draw from
>>>>> precedents. Are there commands that have such an option?
>>>>>>>> It's pretty rare. It is assumed that Unix uses can type " | less"
>>>>>> Is nobody except me questioning the assumption that we're only
>>> talking about Unix users?
>>>> Didn't the OP specify that he was writing a command-line utility for
>> Linux/Unix?
>> *cough* I'm the OP, and no I didn't.
>> Obviously I'm a Linux user myself, but I'm presumptuous enough to hope that
> when I release the utility publicly[1], others may find it of some small
> use. Including Windows users.
>> [1] Real Soon Now.

As a Windows user in recent years, I expect -h to give me a list of 
options, hopefully with some annotation beyond the bare bones, that give 
the signature of the command (regarding it as a function call). 'python 
-h' is pretty bare bones. 'python -m test -h' is much better. I expect 
both to tell me how to properly pass a file argument. I don't expect 
either to tell me how write a python or unittest file. I use the manual 
for this.
-- 
Terry Jan Reedy