Bug 1859 – The librarian (lib.exe) confused by dashes in object names

I'm not sure if this is the correct place for reporting this, but it's I across it because of rebuild's use of dashes in object file names. Doing the following will cause lib to go into interactive mode instead of adding b-c.obj to the library: --- c:\prog\test\lib>lib -c test.lib a.obj Digital Mars Librarian Version 8.02n Copyright (C) Digital Mars 2000-2007 All Rights Reserved http://www.digitalmars.com/ctg/lib.html Digital Mars Librarian complete. c:\prog\test\lib>lib test.lib b-c.obj Digital Mars Librarian Version 8.02n Copyright (C) Digital Mars 2000-2007 All Rights Reserved http://www.digitalmars.com/ctg/lib.html list file (.lst) c:\prog\test\lib>oops... --- Adding an option, like -p512 when adding b-c.obj fixes the problem. Putting quotes around the file name doesn't help.

This is how lib is designed to work. See http://www.digitalmars.com/ctg/lib.html Always put the switches first, or you'll be using the "obsolete" syntax.

The problem is that this: lib test.lib b-c.obj When there are no switches, the docs say that the object files will be added to the library. But object file names with dashes in them confuse lib, so with the above command line, it enters interactive mode instead.

That's because it matches the syntax used by the obsolete syntax. There's nothing to be done about that, except don't put - in your object files. Use an _ instead.

How about an option ("--" is the one commonly used) which specifies that all the following arguments are not switches? As a (somewhat useless) bonus, this also allows for files with the same names as switches.