this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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I like CLI tools that everything I need can be found in a short
command --helpcall, if I don't need to useman commandit's even better.I've used poor CLI tools for example
adbyou type this and you get almost a scientific article with more than 100 flags to use. No I don't want to need to usegrep.A good one would be
pacmanit separates clearly what it does instead of shoving it all in a single command.This is where a man page comes in but alas, but some (perhaps even most) of them are fucking horrible. The core incantation is either too dumbed-down or (more often) too long-winded.
Some good ones I can praise are netcat, ghostscript and 7z. Special praise goes to the Library Funtions Manual entries like signal and exit.
Bad ones ones in my book are vim (too short), ffmpeg (a simple reordering of sections would make it quite a bit better, like moving the less common flags lower down the page) and git starts of strong but ends up being way too detailed and unstructured.
I could go listing examples for days, so I might as well stop now.
Personally I dislike pacman as it uses capital-letter flags as subcommands while I'm used to actual subcommands
You can use long option names instead too, as each capital letter mode has a long option name, such as
-R --removeand-S --sync.My problem is that it's a flag and not like
# pacman removeI don't get why that is a problem. It's just an option name with 2 dashes in front. In fact, that is the "correct" way of handling options, as in standard option processing in GNU / Linux. I personally dislike options without dash, but on the other hand it does not bother me enough to be bothered by it.
pacman --removeis almost identical topacman remove, so I don't know why that is a "problem".Is there a difference between one dash - vs two dashes -- ? I don't get why it makes sense to use two as its just an extra key press?
Sorry for going a bit off topic here
No problem, it's always good idea to ask.
By convention two dashes
--are used for options with long name, such as--remove, while single dash-is used for single letter options such as-R. There can be some extra rules how options are used and combined, but that is not always true for every application. A common implementation is that options with single dash can be combined to have less to press, while double dash options cannot. Meaning if you have options-a -b -cthen you could combine them into one bucket as-abcor-ab -c, all equivalent. But you cannot combine--remove -a -binto--abremovein example. There can be some extra rules and some applications handle options bit differently.Because it's not an option but a subcommand.
Guix and standard tooling like perf also use subcommands. I'm used to flags/options modifying the way the same inputs are processed, not completely changing what you give as $1.
But its just a matter of 2 dashes. It shouldn't be a problem.
You misunderstand me. It's not about typing it. It's not conforming to prevalent Linux paradigms which creates artificial confusion and learning difficulties. There's a reason it's
git pulland notgit -L,perf annotateand notperf -A. It's a great semantic difference like<b>vs<h3>. I'm saying this as an Arch user.I don't think it would make ANY difference if the option was named
git --pullinsteadgit pull(you don't have to use the single uppercase). That is NOT the same semantic difference between and , because it (the pull example) operates the same as before. The only difference are the two dashes. I don't see how this creates confusion or learning difficulties.The prevalent way (except for ancient tools like tar), and thus the norm, is that options are meant to be optional and subcommands are like old "do one thing" Unix commands (do completely different things, can have completely different set of arguments) but you prepend the name of the software in front of them. You can see the impact of this reflected in documentation for argument parsers: https://docs.python.org/3.14/library/argparse.html#%3A%7E%3Atext=Required+options+are+generally+considered+bad+form+because+users+expect+options+to+be+optional https://gobyexample.com/command-line-subcommands#%3A%7E%3Atext=Command-Line+Subcommands-%2CGo+by+Example%3A+Command-Line+Subcommands%2Cthat+have+their+own+flags.
I know how subcommands work. But that is not the point I am making. Having two dashes in front of it or not like
pacman removeorpacman --removedoes not change how the command operates. It is literally having two dashes or not and therefore is not an issue.Hmm, I don't know about Pacman, but for example openSUSE's
zypper removehas a--clean-depsflag, which doesn't exist on the other subcommands. So, it wouldn't make sense to have it bezypper --remove --clean-deps...But you can find a good short description about each option with
-hS. It's well designed in my opinion because of that, no need to go far to understand it.That's good documentation, not good interface
Edit: For example you could've had
pacman sync -hinsteadWhy in the world is -S used for install?
-Sstands for "sync". You are syncing to the online database.Pacman flags not being idempotent (-SS, yy, uu and such existing) is so unbelievably horrible that I can't use arch just because of it.
I've never used Arch, can you explain how it behaves?
The flag -y refreshes the package list (like apt update). For some reason, you use the flag -yy to force it to clear the whole package list and redownload everything.
To allow package downgrades when upgrading you use -uu.
These are very commonly suggested fixes to arch package management problems, for example when you leave your arch install to suit for too long, it will be impossible to update it because of dependency problems. So you google it and people are saying to run "pacman -SSyyuu" or other such commands.
Those additional options should be their own flags, command line flags should be idempotent (it should flip a switch on, doing it multiple times shouldn't change anything).
Okay yeah that's terrible