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Long Option Names

Many of the commands we have studied feature both short and long option names. For instance, the ls command has many options that can be expressed in either short or long form. For example:

[me@linuxbox ~]$ ls -ad

[me@linuxbox ~]$ ls -ad

and:

[me@linuxbox ~]$ ls --all --directory

[me@linuxbox ~]$ ls --all --directory

are equivalent commands. In the interests of reduced typing, short options are preferred when entering options on the command line, but when writing scripts, long options can provide improved readability.

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