[fpc-pascal] FPC happily eats wrong parameters

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Tue, 24 Sep 2013 14:28:42 +0200
Sven Barth <pascaldragon at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Am 24.09.2013 14:17, schrieb Mattias Gaertner:
> > Hi,
> >
> > When calling "fpc -d foo test.pas" there are two mistakes:
> > First the -d parameter is missing a value, which fpc silently ignores.
> > And second there are two files to compile. FPC ignores that too, gives
> > a hint, but compiles anyway.
> >
> > Design or bug?
> The '-d' argument is written explicitely to do something only if it has 
> a (directly following) argument. Otherwise it does nothing. If this 
> should be considered a bug or not is up to discussion, but the code is 
> this way at least since the migration to SVN.

Well, maybe the word "bug" is too strong.
It would be a nice feature, if fpc does not let the user shoot his
foot this way. 


> That FPC warns if multiple files are supplied is by design as there is a 
> specific warning about this. FPC will always use the last filename given 
> as mentioned here: 
> http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/user/userse70.html#x182-189000C.11

Yes, it is this way since at least 2000. I assumed that eventually
fpc will support compiling multiple files. But I guess this will not
happen, so maybe it would be better to change the warning to an error.
A warning is defined as something that is probably wrong, but may be
needed in some cases. Where is the need for passing files that the
compiler ignores?

Mattias