[andrewla]

> This is considered more user-friendly than simply crashing

(I'm going to assume the passive voice means "the article considers this more user-friendly" rather than some sort of commonly accepted fact).

I disagree with this strongly and agree with the GP -- I would much rather have the command exit with a message saying that a required parameter is missing. For example, if I have a script using a command and the command becomes interactive, then my script is dead; but if it simply exits then my script has failed at a repeatable point.

You could say that I should pass a "--noninteractive" flag into everything just in case, but sometimes these things aren't supported. I would much rather have an application support a "--interactive" flag to support those who want to be able to interact with the tool.

I think the two sides of this are unlikely to be able to convince each other. At least the article presents a reasonable-ish middle ground of always offering help as to the way to circumvent the interaction at the point where interaction is required.

[jessaustin]

So you want the script to [EDIT:] exit with an error code rather than hanging around waiting for input? That seems possible, with some sort of generous (e.g. 5 minutes) exit timer on the prompt. Would that satisfy your concerns? If not, what else is needed here?

ps. the verb "considered" is a good sign that this is an opinion, and would be even in a more "active" sentence.

[boomlinde]

First of all I think "crash" is the wrong word here. Unix tools commonly exit gracefully with an error code when the argument requirements are not met. Often with an informative error message.

A five minute pause sounds ridiculous to me, absolutely not user friendly from either end. It's jus unpredictable and time wasting. If you absolutely must, you can use 'isatty' to check whether stdin/stdout/stderr are connected to a terminal and act accordingly.

There is some merit to having consistent and predictable behavior regardless of where and by whom the tool is invoked, though.

[jessaustin]

Checking for the tty is discussed in TFA and in sibling comments.