“-help” being equivalent to “-h -e -l -p” is not a GNUism. It’s described by POSIX. If a utility takes the options “-a” and “-o something” and uses POSIX getopt

“-help” being equivalent to “-h -e -l -p” is not a GNUism. It’s described by POSIX. If a utility takes the options “-a” and “-o something” and uses POSIX getopt(), then these are all equivalent: cmd -ao arg path path cmd -a -o arg path path cmd -o arg -a path path cmd -a -o arg -- path path cmd -a -oarg path path cmd -aoarg path path