Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
Is there a style guide to writing command line applications’ arguments on unix platforms? Coming from the iOS world I’m thinking of something akin to the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). I’m writing a script in Python that can take parameters.
Example: How to name arguments, when to use -dash or --doubleDash.
The GNU Coding Standards have a section on command line programs.
For a posixy feel, you shouldn’t only provide the standard command line options, both short and long, but also, if possible, adhere to reading from the standard input (or the command line) and writing to the standard output, and only overriding the output with an option (like
-o/--output). That’s what one expects of most GNU command line tools.