I expect `hp2ps -cd` to work as `hp2ps -c -d` does.

It's a common convention among command-line programs that if the documentation describes short options, such as -c and -d then it should also accept their combination like -cd, unless otherwise stated.

Alternatively, if this is not supported, then at least a warning abound unknown option "cd" should be displayed. Instead the process silently accepts -cd, and produces a colorful chart (-c) but does not sort by variance (ignores d).

I'm not sure what version of hp2ps I use, because it seems to ignore --version and -v and --help does not produce version string anywhere.

However: $ ghc --version The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System, version 7.10.2

Trac metadata

Trac field	Value
Version	7.10.2
Type	FeatureRequest
TypeOfFailure	OtherFailure
Priority	normal
Resolution	Unresolved
Component	Profiling
Test case
Differential revisions
BlockedBy
Related
Blocking
CC
Operating system
Architecture

changed weight to 5

added Tfeature request Trac import profiling labels

I agree; it would be nice if this were the case. Perhaps you could offer a patch? hp2ps is a C program and can be found in the GHC tree in utils/hp2ps.

I'll devote two hours to that and describe the results if it's not enough time to solve it.

I've run out of time, so I didn't figure out how to configure all the tools to make the pull request, and where and how to add tests for this file. But here is the minimal change I believe fixes the problem:

diff --git a/utils/hp2ps/Main.c b/utils/hp2ps/Main.c
index a44e41c862..30dbc2992b 100644
--- a/utils/hp2ps/Main.c
+++ b/utils/hp2ps/Main.c
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[])
                 goto nextarg;
            case 'd':
                dflag++;
-                goto nextarg;
+                break;
            case 'i':
                switch( *(*argv + 1) ) {
                  case '-':
@@ -94,16 +94,16 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[])
                 goto nextarg;
            case 'g':
                gflag++;
-               goto nextarg;
+               break;
            case 'y':
                yflag++;
-               goto nextarg;
+               break;
            case 'b':
                bflag++;
-               goto nextarg;
+               break;
            case 's':
                sflag++;
-               goto nextarg;
+               break;
            case 'm':
                mflag++;
                TWENTY = atoi(*argv + 1);
@@ -122,7 +122,7 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[])
                goto nextarg;
            case 'c':
                cflag++;
-               goto nextarg;
+               break;
            case '?':
            default:
                Usage(*argv-1);

In particular it seems that the intent of the

    while (argc && argv[0][0] == '-') {
        while (*++*argv)
            switch(**argv) {

loop was to loop through all characters within a single word, and indeed this is how it works for "-p" option, but for all the others goto nextarg; is used instead break; which skips all the other letters.

A better solution in my opinion would be to use some library to parse the options because the current code (and code style) seems quite complicated to me.

I had no time to investigate which of these libraries we could use in order to support MSYS2 etc. Nor the time to actually rewrite the code to use such a library.

Thanks for giving it a shot! I'll try to finish up your patch when I get a chance.

added Pnormal label