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Comment by AlexanderDhoore | Hacker News Reader

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AlexanderDhoore

Using double -- for long named flags is a GNU-ism. Java came from Sun and so prefers the single dashes.

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But "-help" is just "-h -e -l -p" ...

Which is also a gnuism

That's my point - "-help" violates the gnu standard.

That's his point, Sun has nothing to do with Gnu so they are not bound to their "standards".

the point was that that gnu is not a universal standard

“-help” being equivalent to “-h -e -l -p” is not a GNUism. It’s described by POSIX. If a utility takes the options “-a” and “-o something” and uses POSIX getopt(), then these are all equivalent:

    cmd -ao arg path path
    cmd -a -o arg path path
    cmd -o arg -a path path
    cmd -a -o arg -- path path
    cmd -a -oarg path path
    cmd -aoarg path path

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