naming command arguments

[Anthony Green <green@redhat.com>]

I've been talking to some GDB users who are frustrated with some of
GDB's command syntax.  My understanding is that optional command
arguments must be the last possible arguments, and they get dropped off
right to left.  The problem is that some GDB commands have multiple
arguments, all of which make sense to be optional, but in no particular
order.

So, for instance, the restore command looks something like:

	restore FILENAME [OFFSET [START [STOP]]]

In this case, if you only want to specify the START argument, your
forced to give OFFSET argument.

They're suggestion, which seems to make sense to me, is to introduce the
concept of named parameters for GDB commands.  So, in my previous
example, they could simply write...

	restore FILENAME start:VALUE

...and let GDB make reasonable assumptions about OFFSET and STOP

How do people feel about introducing these kinds of arguments to certain
GDB commands (like restore)?

AG