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Eugene Yarmash
Asked: 2011-01-03 11:10:57 +0800 CST

What's the difference between BSD-style and Unix-style command line options?

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I tried to google it but to no avail. Can anybody help me with this?

linux unix command-line-interface freebsd

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It depends on the program. ps is the one that you encounter the most often - somebody who grew up in a BSD environment will type ps auwwx while somebody who grew up in a System V environment will type ps -ef even though ps these days supports both types of options now.

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  2. Much and little, see:

    Also worry about:

    Case sensitivity e.g.

    mailx -R  [email protected] .....  # GNU/Linux
mailx -r  [email protected] .....  # Unix

    Options required in some flavours but not others e.g.

    /usr/bin/echo -e "This\nis a\n test"  # GNU/Linux
/bin/echo        "This\nis a\n test"  # Unix

    Additional options e.g.

    last -y  # BSD  - include year
last -a  # GNU/Linux - include hostname
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  3. One of the major differences across the platform is positional arguments. Most of the command line utilities will enforce that flags come before positional arguments. That is, on a GNU system, the following is fine:

    ls / -la

    On BSD, these are typically not valid. Obviously, this isn't the extent of the differences between the two, but its one of the differences that drives me up the wall when I switch between them.

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