Option conventions

To provide a clean and consistent behavior, we chose to have all these programs use the GNU function getopt_long_only to parse command lines.

As a result, you can:

• give the options in any order, interspersed as you wish with non-option arguments;
• use `-' or `--' to start an option name;
• use any unambiguous abbreviation for an option name;
• separate option names and values with either `=' or one or more spaces;
• use filenames that would otherwise look like options by putting them after an option `--'.

By convention, non-option arguments, if specified, generally define the name of an input file, as documented for each program.

If a particular option with a value is given more than once, it is the last value that counts.

For example, the following command line specifies the options `foo', `bar', and `verbose'; gives the value `baz' to the `abc' option, and the value `xyz' to the `quux' option; and specifies the filename `-myfile-'.

-foo --bar -verb -abc=baz -quux karl --quux xyz -- -myfile-

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