NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/comp/windows/x/15719

Text File | 1992-08-27 | 1.9 KB | 38 lines

Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Path: sparky!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!network.ucsd.edu!scubed!scubed.com!stevens
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Stevens)
Subject: Re: Disappearing command line arguments
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (USENET News System)
Nntp-Posting-Host: s3mars
Organization: S-CUBED, A Division of Maxwell Laboratories
References:  <[e-mail]>
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 16:27:50 GMT
Lines: 24

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Jeff Stevens) writes:
|>   XtInitialize (and variants) removes all Xt command line arguments
|> from the command line list argv and reduces argc accordingly.  However,
|> it also removes a "-d" flag, and sometimes removes a "-t" flag.  "-d"
|> appears to be equivalent to "-display".  These are not documented toolkit
|> options, and I can't find any reference to them in the X source code.
|>
|>   Is this a bug or a feature?  Where and why are these arguments removed?
|> Are there any other undocumented flags extracted by the X initialization
|> routines?  Why is "-t" removed sometimes and sometimes not?  This is causing
|> problems, since we use "-t" for another purpose.

Thanks to the people who responded so quickly to the above question.  I had
not realized that any unique abbreviation of an option flag would be interpreted
as the option flag.  This seems like a dangerous feature, since it means that
if the command line is parsed by the application other than by the resource
manager, application flags must be distinct not only from the standard toolkit
flags, but also from any unique abbreviation of these flags or any application
supplied flags.  The only safe solution to this problem is to explicitly
reference each flag in the application defined options table.

--
----------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Stevens    [e-mail], [e-mail]