cowsay --help fails

[Ben Asselstine]

Binary package hint: cowsay

Here is what i see for cowsay version 3.03-9 on ubuntu 8.04:
$ cowsay --help
/usr/bin/cowsay version [unknown] calling Getopt::Std::getopts (version 1.05 [paranoid]),
running under Perl version 5.8.8.

Usage: cowsay [-OPTIONS [-MORE_OPTIONS]] [--] [PROGRAM_ARG1 ...]

The following single-character options are accepted:
 With arguments: -e -f -T -W
 Boolean (without arguments): -b -d -g -h -l -L -n -N -p -s -t -w -y

Options may be merged together. -- stops processing of options.
Space is not required between options and their arguments.
  [Now continuing due to backward compatibility and excessive paranoia.
   See ``perldoc Getopt::Std'' about $Getopt::Std::STANDARD_HELP_VERSION.]

--

I expected cowsay to show me the help, like so many other programs that accept the --help option. Instead it confused me even more by showing me some perl gobbledegook.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. What you submitted is not really a bug, or a problem in the current implementation of the software, but rather a feature request. Ubuntu has a site for collecting new ideas just like this and I encourage you to submit to. [www] http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

I will Wishlist this bug report.

connor@lappy686-mk2:~$ apt-cache policy cowsay
cowsay:
  Installed: 3.03-9
  Candidate: 3.03-9
  Version table:
 *** 3.03-9 0
        500 http://mirrors.easynews.com hardy/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

connor@lappy686-mk2:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04
Codename: hardy

[François Marier (fmarier)]

If someone wants to see this in cowsay and produce a patch for it, I will happily review it for inclusion in the Debian package.

[François Marier (fmarier)]

It hasn't been mentioned explicitly here, but until a patch is written to add support for "--help", "cowsay -h" is the command you should use.