command line option
command line option
(software)Some commands require each option to be a separate argument,introduced by a new "-" or "/", others allow multiple optionletters to be concatenated into a single argument with asingle "-" or "/", e.g. "ls -al". A few Unix commands(e.g. ar, tar) allow the "-" to be omitted. Some optionsmay or must be followed by a value, e.g. "cc prog.c -o prog",sometimes with and sometimes without an intervening space.
getopt and getopts are commands for parsing command lineoptions. There is also a C library routine called getoptfor the same purpose.