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Questions tagged [options]

Passing options like -l or --word to commands, or parsing them in scripts.

0 votes
1 answer
83 views

When and why was the single dash introduced for command line options?

Already in the 1980ies, ls -l did mostly what it does today. For a boolean option, in this case l, I hardly ever questioned why it is prefixed with a dash: without an indicator, ls l would mean "...
Harald's user avatar
  • 928
11 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why does `nice` with a negative argument (e.g. `nice -15`) increment niceness?

My nice is from GNU coreutils 9.1. I observed that nice -15 is equivalent to nice -n 15: nice # prints 0 for me, the base niceness is 0 nice -n 15 nice # prints 15, this is ...
Kamil Maciorowski's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
46 views

How to gracefully handle differences in command options between different versions?

Inspired by What is the difference between “base64 -b0” in macOS versions prior to macOS 13 (Ventura) and “base64 -i” in macOS 13 (Ventura)? Are there common ways to avoid the script breaking on a ...
typo's user avatar
  • 229
0 votes
1 answer
47 views

What is the difference between quotes wrap around only the option value vs quotes wrap around the option name and option value?

What is the difference between quotes wrap around only the option value eg: grep --file="grep pattern file.txt" * vs quotes wrap around the option name and option value eg: grep "--...
Nor.Z's user avatar
  • 133
1 vote
1 answer
108 views

What are the possible objdump demangle styles?

The manpage for objdump states: --demangle[=style] ... The optional demangling style argument can be used to choose an appropriate demangling style for your compiler. Nowhere does it mention ...
Byron Hawkins's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
79 views

Could someone explain when I would use sync -d over sync with no options?

I'm looking at an online man page for the sync command and I can't quite figure out the intended use of the -d or --data option. Is it faster? Does it have any noticeable effect? Or is it something ...
Husky2490's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
70 views

Duplicate boot params after grub2-mkconfig

I removed the flags 'quiet' , 'splash' , and added others in the file /etc/default/grub, applied them: grub2-mkconfig -o . After a reboot, the kernel boot flags began to double. With each 'grub2-...
Maksim Aleksanin's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
881 views

Looking for a more permissive alternative to GNU getopt for wrapper script

I often find myself writing shell functions or shell scripts that are meant to be wrappers around other commands. It is also frequent that I want such a wrapper to support a few flags/options. The ...
kjo's user avatar
  • 15.6k
6 votes
1 answer
170 views

How can I force zsh to write automatically complete path to history?

Suppose I did some time ago cd /path/to/foo/bar and then evince file.pdf. Now if I want to open file.pdf again I have also to do both steps again (using history). However I would do it in a single ...
student's user avatar
  • 18.5k
0 votes
3 answers
329 views

listing existing users sorted by date of creation using cut command

ASK: to use cut command to list all users to confirm a successful useradd. ISSUE: The list was very long and I had to scroll through output to find user. NEED: Sort by the date the user was created. ...
VintageDroid's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
315 views

How to check for passed options using getopts in a POSIX shell? (Report, count, and discard.)

How to check for passed options using getopts (man page) in a POSIX shell? (Report, count, and discard.) My idea is this: Many of my scripts take no options (not even -h for help, I am transitioning ...
Vlastimil Burián's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
55 views

Script is not activating the options

I'm making a script to open url by terminal and when typing: #!/usr/bin/bash ## origin: https://www.vivaolinux.com.br/script/Abrir-arquivos-em-nova-aba-no-Firefox ## ### Se quizer que o novo link ...
user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
979 views

rm command contradictory options -i and -f

I learned that -i option is interactive mode and -f option is force model in rm command. When I tried both options rm -if test.txt it did not ask me and just deleted it which means -f option overrode ...
user67275's user avatar
  • 243
0 votes
2 answers
347 views

Error parsing arguments for options in script Unexpected option in Shell Script

I'm trying to parsearg arguments to pass options to the script. but it is showing the following errors Unexpected option: -u in addition to looping below: $ gitpratico -u "<usuario_github>&...
user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
71 views

install --compare is said to, in some cases, not modify the destination at all - but in which cases?

The man page for install describes the --compare option like so: -C, --compare compare each pair of source and destination files, and in some cases, do not modify ...
not2savvy's user avatar
  • 263

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