>Provide long, readable option names with short aliases.
It's unnecessary, and potentially even burdensome, to provide short aliases for less commonly used options. `ls --quoting-style` doesn't need a short option — you're almost never going to need it.
>Provide a version command that can be accessed by version, --version or -v.
Don't use `-v` for that. It's true that some utilities do, but i think even more use `-V` — including most GNU tools, Python, PostgreSQL, cURL, OpenSSH, iptables, iproute2, procps-ng, just about any Symfony Console app, &c. Even if you don't need a verbosity option right now, you might some day, and it's best to have that work as expected.
>Sometimes your script will take longer to execute than people expect. Outputting something like ’Processing…’ can go a long way toward reassuring the user that their command went through.
If you do print status messages like that, make sure to send them to STDERR if your utility outputs any actual data (like a report or file listing). Same for progress meters.
>Conversely, don’t exit with a nonzero status code if your CLI didn’t encounter an error. Your cleverness will end up confusing and frustrating your users, especially if -e is set.
Using `set -e` is the 'cleverness' here. It's a bad idea in all but a few cases. Also, i'm not sure what qualifies as 'encountering an error', but i think it's perfectly reasonable to return a non-zero status in certain non-error conditions, like when `grep` doesn't find a match, or in other cases where output is valid but empty.
It's unnecessary, and potentially even burdensome, to provide short aliases for less commonly used options. `ls --quoting-style` doesn't need a short option — you're almost never going to need it.
>Provide a version command that can be accessed by version, --version or -v.
Don't use `-v` for that. It's true that some utilities do, but i think even more use `-V` — including most GNU tools, Python, PostgreSQL, cURL, OpenSSH, iptables, iproute2, procps-ng, just about any Symfony Console app, &c. Even if you don't need a verbosity option right now, you might some day, and it's best to have that work as expected.
>Sometimes your script will take longer to execute than people expect. Outputting something like ’Processing…’ can go a long way toward reassuring the user that their command went through.
If you do print status messages like that, make sure to send them to STDERR if your utility outputs any actual data (like a report or file listing). Same for progress meters.
>Conversely, don’t exit with a nonzero status code if your CLI didn’t encounter an error. Your cleverness will end up confusing and frustrating your users, especially if -e is set.
Using `set -e` is the 'cleverness' here. It's a bad idea in all but a few cases. Also, i'm not sure what qualifies as 'encountering an error', but i think it's perfectly reasonable to return a non-zero status in certain non-error conditions, like when `grep` doesn't find a match, or in other cases where output is valid but empty.