as mentioned by others, the double hyphen makes all the difference, since `foo -flags` is the same as `foo -f -l -a -g -s`. if you allow single-dash long options you'll lose the appeal of short options. my favorite example is `grep -FIHnrie sth smw`: short option bundling is a massive usability enabler.
let me turn the question around: you imply that you wouldn't miss bundling of short options. what tools do you use most? how come you'd not find `-a -b -c -d -e` inferior to `-abcde`?
I come from the DOS/Windows side, where it's relatively uncommon for CLI programs to support bundled options. When it's done, it usually is disambiguated by context -- for instance, -Oxyz to enable compiler optimizations x, y, and z. That's always worked OK for the programs I've dealt with, but obviously the *nix world has a culture of more elaborate and advanced command line tool usage. So it just didn't occur to me that this is what the -- business was for.
I wasn't objecting to it, just wondering why it was done that way.
let me turn the question around: you imply that you wouldn't miss bundling of short options. what tools do you use most? how come you'd not find `-a -b -c -d -e` inferior to `-abcde`?