For command-line parameters, yes. For everything else, I can understand that the writer would want to express more semantics in the character than just 'minus'.

For command-line parameters, yes. For everything else, I can understand that the writer would want to express more semantics in the character than just 'minus'. In fact, I would guess that anything else than 2d as a command-line parameter prefix is a bug (bar using a /). That said, normalization when searching is useful.