Documentation Issue

While --%, the stop-parsing symbol technically works on Unix-like platforms (macOS, Linux), its Windows-focused behavior makes it near-useless there, which should be clearly stated.

Context of the issue

• URL to the article (Docs or GitHub URL): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_parsing

• Issue affects the following content (check all that apply):

  Cmdlet reference & about_ topics

  • Version 7 content
  • Version 6 content
  • Version 5.1 content
  • Version 5.0 content
  • Version 4.0 content
  • Version 3.0 content

  Conceptual articles

  • Fundamental conceptual articles
  • Script sample articles
  • DSC articles
  • Gallery articles
  • JEA articles
  • WMF articles
  • SDK articles

• Is the issue specific to a platform (Y/N - Win/macOS/Linux): N

Detailed description of the issue

The idea behind --% was to allow command lines designed for cmd.exe to work in PowerShell.

The generalization of this idea would be to make --% work similar to /bin/sh (the default, POSIX-like shell) on Unix-like platforms; however, in PowerShell/PowerShell#3733 it was decided not to attempt that, so --%' s behavior remains Windows-focused.

As such, it has little value on Unix-like platforms, and that should be noted in about_Parsing.

Specifically, the following aspects make the behavior a poor fit on Unix:

• single quotes aren't supported, even though /bin/sh supports them - see Stop-parsing symbol on Unix-like platform doesn't support single-quoted arguments PowerShell/PowerShell#10831 (since closed in favor of this issue).
• the only way to reference environment variable is cmd.exe-style (%var%), whereas /bin/sh uses $var syntax.
• /bin/sh performs automatic globbing (wildcard expansion) on arguments such as *.txt, which --% doesn't do.
• More generally, /bin/sh performs a range of shell expansions that --% doesn't perform.