mattrib -h does not work as advertised

[Peter Geer]

Binary package hint: mtools

It appears that the mattrib option to remove the "hidden" attribute has changed since 9.04, but the documentation has not been updated.

According to both the mattrib man page and the usage message, the -h options should be used clear the "hidden" attr on a file, e.g.:
mattrib -h S:/somedir
In 9.04, this worked correctly. In 9.10, it doesn't work at all - it just prints the usage message, as if there were an invalid option. Note that the corresponding +h option to *set* the hidden attr works as expected.

A little experimentation revealed that using -H instead of -h actually unhides the file correctly. However, this is a change from the established behavior and is not reflected anywhere in the documentation. Either mattrib should be patched to use -h to unhide files as in previous versions or the man page and usage message need to be updated to reflect the new option.

[William Kimberly (williamek)]

I experienced the same behavior when migrating to a new Ubuntu distribution. The previous ubuntu distribution had Mtools version 3.9.11, dated May 31st, 2007, where mattrib -h (lowercase) would work fine. The next distribution has Mtools version 4.0.10, dated March 10th, 2009, fails with -h argument.