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Comment by frizlab | Hacker News Reader

Most of these problems have incorrect solution. For instance, the actual solution to parsing portrait or landscape is to not use a string for this. It should never have been a string! Other better solutions apply for the rest too.

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The command line is defined by strings. It had to be a string to stay within end-user requirements. You may be able to make a good case that the string input is best represented as something parseable by an existing argument parser library, but even then you are dependent on that library handling the strings correctly. Which, at best, pushes the problem onto someone else. Someone else who still has to be aware of input possibilities.

Oh missed the context, my bad. That being said, in that case, I’m definitely not convinced by the need for toLower (:

Why would you accept ArBiTrArY-cased command-line arguments in the first place? I don't think I've ever seen a cli utility that accepts the wrong case. Just compare the raw bytes. `ls --ALL` doesn't work, and neither should `my_app --PORTRAIT` (no matter which "I" you type).

Well my friend, you probably didn't use Windows before. FoRmaT /Q /f:NTFS c: is as valid as it gets.

Does this means it is a good idea? It is a whole other subject though.

It's ironic that you are offended by another cultures habits when TFA is a post about localization, it's the same exact subject.

Who says I’m offended?

> Why would you accept ArBiTrArY-cased command-line arguments in the first place?

Human user friendliness?

You are pausing a command line parameter. It will always come in as a string.

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