[minitech]

> Those file descriptors are available under/dev/fd on linux, with named options you can do --pk /dev/fd/5.

If you have a procfs mounted at /proc and the open syscall to use on it, sure (and even then, it’s wasteful and adds unnecessary failure paths). Even argument parsing is yet more code to audit.

I think the design is pretty good as-is.

[gnull]

It's 2025, dude. You can't be seriously telling me how difficult it is to parse arguments. It may be difficult in C, but then we're down another sick rabbit hole of justifying bad interface with bad language choice.

One open syscall in addition to dozens already made before your main function is started will have no observable effect whatsoever.

[minitech]

The context is what’s essentially a shell-accessible library for a minimal set of cryptographic primitives. It’s very reasonable to want it to be as lightweight, portable, and easy to audit as possible, and to want it to run in environments where (continuing on Linux for example) the open syscall to /dev/fd/n -> /proc/self/fd/n will not succeed for whatever reason, e.g. a restrictive sandbox.

Not involving argument parsing simplifies the interface regardless of how easy the implementation is, and the cost is just having to look up a digit in a manual that I certainly hope anyone doing raw ed25519 in shell is reading anyway.