Clarification in man page?

[Werner Koch]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:29, peter at digitalbrains.com said:

> myself, and I've seen it mentioned by others on this mailing list. At least on
> *nix, it's relatively common that options can come in any position of the arguments.

That is not a general Unix feature but a GNU feature.

> Werner, perhaps it is an idea to have the man page more explicit that all
> options *must* come before the command?

gpg from master does this:

  $ gpg2 foo --armor
  gpg: NOTE: `--armor' is not considered an option
  usage: gpg [options] [filename]

If you really want --armor as a filename, the warning will of course not
be shown

  $ gpg2 -- foo --armor
  usage: gpg [options] [filename]

> I think this sentence is easily misunderstood; in fact, I doubt the statement
> can be made true. I read this as: since they are not distinguished, I can put
> the (single) command in any old place I can put an option in.

And that is actually the case.  The difference between commands and
options is that you may only have one command.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
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