[Thus spake David Laight ("DL: ") 9:17pm...]

DL: yes - I found that one while writing some code to run under cygwin.
DL:
DL: It can also be avoided by starting the option string with '+'.
DL: (I'm not sure how that affects starting the string with ':', or the
DL: ability to use '+' as an option character!)
DL:
DL: FWIW 'rlogin host -l username' has always worked.

That has also always been documented, and was implemented as such
so that one could symlink /usr/bin/rlogin to /usr/hosts/host,
and then just run

	host -l username ...

[as it compared the basename of argv[0] to "rlogin".  Hope you don't
have a host named "rlogin"...]

DL: 	David
DL:
DL: --
DL: David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk

There are obviously exceptions to the rule, but those are usually well
known, especially once one discovers that the command does not follow
the "standard".

I am still not amused by getopt()'s behaviour under Linux.

One could argue that 'cc' was another funky one, seeing as one could
write
	cc -o target source0.c source1.c ... sourceN.c -llib0 -llib1 ...

or
	cc $sourcefiles $libargs -o target

[in fact, this one is STILL kind of this way...]

Madness.

				--*greywolf;
--
I'm really a software toolsmith and a musician by trade, but nobody really
needs a software toolsmith much, and the music industry is so cutthroat
that it would probably do me in.  So I do systems administration on the
side as a hobby.  Funny that my hobby finds more work than either of my
professions...