In shell commands, it is a common convention to use:
- A single hyphen (
-
) to specify a single character flag (or a short option), and; - A double hyphen (
--
) is used to specify a multi-character option.
For example, to list all files (including the ones that start with .
), you would typically use the ls
shell command with the -a
flag or the --all
option, like so:
ls -a
ls --all
Using a single hyphen you can specify multiple single-character flags in one go. However, with double hyphens you can only specify a single multi-character option in one go.
For example, to list all files (including the ones that start with .
) and print the allocated size of each file (in blocks) you would use the ls
shell command like so:
ls -as
ls --all --size
Some shell commands and utilities also allow a double hyphen on its own (i.e. without any option specified). This is also sometimes referred to as "non-option argument". It is typically used to indicate that whatever follows should be processed/interpreted as an argument and not as an option.
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