bug#20354: [feature request] ln with command line arguments in reverse order

[Erik Auerswald]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 01:12:01PM +0200, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
> On 04/17/2015 10:39 AM, Ma Jiehong wrote:
> >Currently, 'cp', 'mv' and 'ln' share the same basic syntax, that is to say 
> >the following:
> >
> >cp [OPTION]  SOURCE DEST
> >mv [OPTION] SOURCE DEST
> >ln [OPTIONS] TARGET LINK_NAME
> >
> >Which is the same exact rule, and is consistent.
> > [...]
> > In this case, the command would act like this:
> > ln --reverse-order LINK_NAME TARGET
> 
> Adding an option to reverse the two may have it's merits, but I guess this
> extra flexibility would only confuse the users even more.

If you do not know the original order beforehand, you do not know the
--reverse-order either. IMHO this option does not help.

> The situation would be better if the target would be an operand to that
> option, similar to mv's --target-directory=DIRECTORY option.

Careful here, --target-directory specifies a DESTination, while ln's TARGET
means SOURCE.

> However, I think this would just bloat the code for not much new 
> functionality,
> and I'm convinced that a good translation for TARGET and LINK_NAME in --help
> output would be the better way.

I'd say that using TARGET instead of SOURCE creates confusion that would be
avoided by using SOURCE and DEST as with cp and mv.

Thanks,
Erik