On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 02:35:36PM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:

I may be biased as every time I think about this one, the first one
that comes to my mind is how "grep -h" (not "git grep", but GNU
grep) behaves.  Yes, "-h" means something else, but by itself, the
command does not make sense, and "ls-remote -h" is an exception to
the rule: most sane commands do not have a sensible semantics when
they take only "-h" and nothing else.  And even for ls-remote it is
true only when you try to be extra lazy and do not say which remote
you are asking.

Yeah, I have to admit "grep -h" is a lot more compelling, since it
matches normal grep. And I've used "grep -h" many times without thinking
about it, simply because the rule just falls out naturally there
(there's nothing possible to do without a regex argument, so we'd show
the usage either way).

And that is why I think "'cmd -h" and nothing else consistently
gives help" may overall be positive in usability, than a rule that
says "'cmd -h' is for short-help unless -h means something else for
the command".

Yeah, I was shooting more for "let's avoid assigning -h to things". But
that's not really possible if we want to be consistent with upstream
grep, which is probably more important.

I think you've convinced me.

-Peff