Why are there short and long alternatives for command line options?
Fresh3 days ago
Mar 15, 202614174 viewsConfidence Score0%
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Problem
Most unixoid commands feature short and long alternatives for command line options, like and , or and . Why do those two ways exist? One is shorter to type, the other is easier to read and understand. But every time I write a shell script, I need to decide which I want to use. Is it known why the t…
Error Output
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Fix for: Why are there short and long alternatives for command line options?
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Originally there were only single-character options. Some programs took multiple-character options, but still with a single dash. AFAIK double-dash multiple-character options come from GNU; they were introduced because they are more readable and oft…
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