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d21d3q | 4 years ago

Sure, but convention is to treat `-long` as `-l -o -n -g'.

discuss

But that is a bad convention, it prioritizes typing speed over readability, and it only works in certain cases (for flag-only parameters). I'd say good riddance to it.

lifthrasiir|4 years ago

That doesn't justify long options starting with a single dash, as one could have made every option start with two dashes. Sure, `--` is longer than `-`, but typing speed shouldn't matter right?

cowl|4 years ago

If we only did "the accepted convention" indefinitely there would be no going forward. I see this change(of being explicit) as a win. The situation was already confusing before with different tools using different conventions. This way of being explicit allows you to be consistent across OS-s too. The world is not only GNU, fortunately.