Command Line Arguments and Options
Some options can be specified by a single dash and a single character, other options require two dashes and a multi-character (verbose) description.
Formats can also be combined, by following some rules:
one character options can be merged
multi-character formats cannot be combined
ls command example
ls --help
Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
-a, --all do not ignore entries starting with .
-A, --almost-all do not list implied . and ..
[...]
-I, --ignore=PATTERN do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN
-k, --kibibytes default to 1024-byte blocks for disk usage;
used only with -s and per directory totals
-l use a long listing format
-L, --dereference when showing file information for a symbolic
link, show information for the file the link
references rather than for the link itself
-m fill width with a comma separated list of entries
-n, --numeric-uid-gid like -l, but list numeric user and group IDs
[...]ls -al- Single character options:
ls --all -l- Multi character options:
ls -I- use ignore pattern option:
📌 Pay attention to option arguments when combining more single character options. It is better to use the long format option.
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