Common Options

Most GNU utilities share the options listed in Table VI-2. The utilities that use these options are marked as such. Almost all POSIX utilities support the and options.

Table VI-2. Common command line options

Option	Effect
	A single hyphen appearing in place of a filename indicates that the utility will accept standard input in place of the file.
	A double hyphen marks the end of the options on a command line. You can follow this option with an argument that begins with a hyphen. Without this option the utility assumes that an argument that begins with a hyphen is an option.
help	Displays a help message for the utility.
version	Displays version information for the utility.