Re: Philosophical wishlist.

[Karl Berry]

Hi Kjetil,

     All the GNU coreutils commands should accept a new flag:
     --example

I fully agree with you about the importance of showing examples.
However, I don't think a new option common to all programs is the thing
to do -- the overhead involved is unbelievable.

Instead, I think programs should add the info to their --help messages.
That also has the benefits of (a) not forcing users to hear about a new
option, and (b) allowing easy re-use of the examples in man pages
generated by help2man, as they are in coreutils.

So my suggestion is to write to bug-coreutils (or wherever else).
My guess is the answer will be "patches are welcome" :).

Meanwhile, I'll put something about it in the coding standards, so
maintainers might at least be more likely to think about it.

Thanks,
Karl