Re: Emacs script options

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Greg Minshall <minshall@umich.edu>
> Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2023 19:13:56 -0800
> 
> hi.  i would like to be able to write Emacs scripts ("#!...") that allow
> a user to enter almost any option to the script itself, *without* having
> to use double dashes ("--") to avoid colliding with Emacs option
> processing.
> 
> looking at "--script" and "-x", this doesn't seem possible.
> 
> as a test case, given a simple script foo.sh (*), using "-x", and
> invoking it with an option "--eval" gives this error:
> 
> ----
> % ./foo.sh --eval
> emacs: Option '--eval' requires an argument
> ----
> 
> (that bare "--eval" *should* be an error if it were meant for Emacs
> itself; however, it is meant for the Emacs script, which may have other
> ideas of the syntax/semantics of "--eval".)

But if we change that, how can we pass additional options to Emacs
when invoking it from a script?  That is also an important capability,
and replacing it with what you want seems to be an incompatible
change, which takes away a capability we have now.

If we want to be able to pass options to the script itself, we need to
do it in a compatible way, that doesn't lose what we have now.

In any case, could you please show a real-life case where this is
needed?  The -x option was intended to support the use cases where the
rest of the script is Emacs Lisp code, so what would such a script do
with an option that is not interpreted by Emacs, and why is that
needed?

Thanks.