[Boost-bugs] [Boost C++ Libraries] #6991: Provide a way to disable interspersed arguments

Subject: [Boost-bugs] [Boost C++ Libraries] #6991: Provide a way to disable interspersed arguments
From: Boost C++ Libraries (noreply_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-06-15 22:08:18

#6991: Provide a way to disable interspersed arguments
----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
 Reporter:  driscoll@…            |       Owner:  vladimir_prus  
     Type:  Feature Requests      |      Status:  new            
Milestone:  To Be Determined      |   Component:  program_options
  Version:  Boost 1.49.0          |    Severity:  Problem        
 Keywords:                        |  
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 I'm trying to write a program that wraps other programs, and allowing
 switches to come after the first positional argument in this situation is
 very annoying from the user's standpoint.

 If I define the flag --flag in my wrapper, it means that
 {{{
     my-program target-program --flag
 }}}
 won't run {{{target-program --flag}}} as one would hope, but will treat
 {{{--flag}}} as an argument to my program.

 This means that the user has to run {{{my-program -- target-program
 --flag}}} every time, which is both annoying and goes against how most
 such programs work on Unix. (You never see someone say "run {{{sudo --
 apt-get install blah}}}." Or xargs, env, nohup, etc.)

 As far as I'm concerned, this problem is a showstopper for using the stock
 Boost po for this sort of program. If the Gflags library didn't have the
 same limitation, I'd be using it right now instead of having patched
 Boost. :-)

 So I request a setting to disable this sort of interspersed arguments.

 ----

 Fortunately, (one possible) fix seems to be pretty simple from what I can
 tell. I'll follow up this post with a patch after I get things cleaned
 back up and such.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/6991>
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