(libc.info.gz) Argument Syntax

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 25.1.1 Program Argument Syntax Conventions
 ------------------------------------------
 
 POSIX recommends these conventions for command line arguments.  'getopt'
 ( Getopt) and 'argp_parse' ( Argp) make it easy to
 implement them.
 
    * Arguments are options if they begin with a hyphen delimiter ('-').
 
    * Multiple options may follow a hyphen delimiter in a single token if
      the options do not take arguments.  Thus, '-abc' is equivalent to
      '-a -b -c'.
 
    * Option names are single alphanumeric characters (as for 'isalnum';
       Classification of Characters).
 
    * Certain options require an argument.  For example, the '-o' command
      of the 'ld' command requires an argument--an output file name.
 
    * An option and its argument may or may not appear as separate
      tokens.  (In other words, the whitespace separating them is
      optional.)  Thus, '-o foo' and '-ofoo' are equivalent.
 
    * Options typically precede other non-option arguments.
 
      The implementations of 'getopt' and 'argp_parse' in the GNU C
      Library normally make it appear as if all the option arguments were
      specified before all the non-option arguments for the purposes of
      parsing, even if the user of your program intermixed option and
      non-option arguments.  They do this by reordering the elements of
      the ARGV array.  This behavior is nonstandard; if you want to
      suppress it, define the '_POSIX_OPTION_ORDER' environment variable.
       Standard Environment.
 
    * The argument '--' terminates all options; any following arguments
      are treated as non-option arguments, even if they begin with a
      hyphen.
 
    * A token consisting of a single hyphen character is interpreted as
      an ordinary non-option argument.  By convention, it is used to
      specify input from or output to the standard input and output
      streams.
 
    * Options may be supplied in any order, or appear multiple times.
      The interpretation is left up to the particular application
      program.
 
    GNU adds "long options" to these conventions.  Long options consist
 of '--' followed by a name made of alphanumeric characters and dashes.
 Option names are typically one to three words long, with hyphens to
 separate words.  Users can abbreviate the option names as long as the
 abbreviations are unique.
 
    To specify an argument for a long option, write '--NAME=VALUE'.  This
 syntax enables a long option to accept an argument that is itself
 optional.
 
    Eventually, GNU systems will provide completion for long option names
 in the shell.
 
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