Confusion about changing meaning of arguments and options, is there an...

salon_sue

I came across a confusing variation in the understanding what options and arguments are with regard to the syntax of commands. For instance, I encountered definitions like: command -a -b -c d e f some differ between -a -b -c , call them options or switches and d e f by calling them arguments. command -a -b -c d e f some, for instance a bash manual, call all -a -b -c d e f arguments and explains, that all of them are accessible from a script by...

Originally asked by sharkant on Stack Exchange (unix) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Adapted from the POSIX standard's "Utility Argument Syntax" section : utility_name [-a] [-b] [-c option_argument] [-d|-e] [-f[option_argument]] [operand...] The utility in the example is named utility_name . It is followed by options , option-arguments , and operands . The arguments that consist of - characters and single letters or digits, such as a , are known as options (or, historically, flags ). Certain options are followed by an option-argument , as shown with [-c option_argument] . The arguments following the last options and option-arguments are named operands . The standard also defines "argument" as In the shell command language, a parameter passed to a utility as the equivalent...

Full answer by Kusalananda: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/364385 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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