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Comment by laurent92 | Hacker News Reader

Everything uses --version, except `java -version`.

Except Java 17. Java 17 went to `java --version`. And `java -version` doesn’t work anymore (Yes I jumped from Java 8 to 17, but most people did).

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mawk is the worst, which, given the article's claim about POSIX, is ironic, because mawk is POSIX-compliant.

  $ mawk --version
  mawk: not an option: --version
  $ mawk --help
  mawk: not an option: --help
  $ mawk -W version
  mawk 1.3.4 20200120
  Copyright 2008-2019,2020, Thomas E. Dickey
  Copyright 1991-1996,2014, Michael D. Brennan

  random-funcs:       srandom/random
  regex-funcs:        internal
  compiled limits:
  sprintf buffer      8192
  maximum-integer     2147483647

And mawk is (was in 16.04 at least) the default version of awk on Ubuntu. How is the user supposed to know this magic incantation? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be fair, I can see this coming out of a strict reading of POSIX: it doesn’t say a single word about GNU-style long options (though there is an implied hole where they can fit), but explicitly leaves -W with an argument as a place for implementation-defined crufties when passed to Awk (I haven’t the slightest idea why).

(Honestly I’d rather not have the convention of programs themselves handling this at all and instead have this be `ident awk` or similar, but I understand this is not going to happen.)

I can only imagine that the "w" stands for "what the hell do I need to pass this thing to get it to tell me something useful"

-version still works:

  $ java -version
  openjdk version "18" 2022-03-22
  OpenJDK Runtime Environment Temurin-18+36 (build 18+36)
  OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Temurin-18+36 (build 18+36, mixed mode, sharing)

And (e.g.) OpenSSL IS `openssl version`, with no dashes at all.

To be fair, when deciding how to implement CLI options, it's probably advisable to run as far away as you can from drawing any sort of inspiration from openssl. Even git looks like a paragon of UX compared to the openssl CLI.

You don't think that -text -noout is an intuitive way to output something as text?

When development on Java started in 1991, double-dash long options weren’t as prevalent as they are today.

I think at one point the canonical approach may even have been:

java -D-version

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