echo: "-n", the next installment

[monarch_dodra]

On Saturday, 27 July 2013 at 12:19:44 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> On Saturday, 27 July 2013 at 01:09:03 UTC, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>> On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 00:38:46 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
>>> After a few weeks of not getting around to it, here's my 
>>> second post:
>>>
>>> http://foreach-hour-life.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-first-corner-n-for-echo.html
>>
>> BTW, std.getopt is a good way to parse arguments. Not sure if 
>> it is relevant to what you want to teach, but should generally 
>> be preferred over handwritten.
>
> I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work ideally for echo as the 
> behaviour depends on the order of the arguments.

getopt knows how to handle ordering, it's really just a matter of 
echo's argument parsing rules being different from classic getopt.

For example, echo does not handle "--" argument (end of options 
mark), which means it is literally impossible for echo's first 
"string argument" to be "-n".

So for example, while "echo -- -n" would print "-- -n", a getopt 
echo would print "-n".

Arguably, this is better behavior, but if the goal is exact 
replication, then it's wrong :/