On Fri, 2005-07-01 at 11:34, Mike McCarty wrote: > > > Many of the FSF programs use a common GETOPT routine which does > all the "-" and "--" parsing common stuff. This routine skips > around in the argument list looking for stuff, and so even > when programs don't document the ability to intermix arguments > and options, they often support it anyway. It's not that the > author decided to support that, it's just that a routine already > exists which does it. Probably everything except tar uses that as the only way to parse options. Gnutar continues to accept the single letter options without the leading '-' so it has to do its own thing too and imposes some extra constraints. I guess using the documented syntax is one of those... -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
