"long" options for POSIX utilities

[Arnold Robbins]

Submitted-by: arnold%audiofax.com at mathcs.emory.edu (Arnold Robbins)

>In article <1991May28.010441.13817 at uunet.uu.net> ONM07%DMSWWU1A.BITNET at VM1.gatech.edu (Julian F. Reschke) writes:
>>I recently heard that future POSIX standards will document `long options'
>>similar to those used in the GNU file utilities.

In article <1991May28.072936.26439 at uunet.uu.net> randall at Virginia.EDU (Randall Atkinson) writes:
>  The above is the first I've heard of such a thing.  The most
>recently reviewed drafts of POSIX.2 and POSIX.2a, which cover the
>Shell & Utilities area, don't seem to mention any such things.

I can pretty safely say that .2 isn't doing anything like adding gnu-like
long options.  I doubt .2a is either.  The whole thrust of the POSIX effort
is (supposed to be) to standardize existing practice.  So far .1 and .2 have
done OK at it.  E.g., dd retains its current, er, *unusual* command line
syntax. :-)
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Volume-Number: Volume 23, Number 80