>perhaps I am missing something, but this seems annoying:
>vax@linkdead bash$ more +COMMENT 
>Missing filename ("less -\?" for help)
>vax@linkdead bash$ more -- +COMMENT 
>Missing filename ("less -\?" for help)

Less has its own unique argument syntax, so it doesn't always do what
you'd expect.  However, it should be possible to make it take "--" to mean
"end of options".  I will add this in the next version.

>btw, there is this cool function, called getopt....

Less was written before getopt existed.  Now some people would like less
to conform to getopt syntax, others want it to use GNU long option names...
Doing either of these would cause some existing syntax to stop working,
so I've been hesitant to change it.  I have recently added special cases for
GNU "--help" and "--version", and now "--".  Maybe I'll start phasing out
the problematic syntax and move to a more standard syntax.
--Mark