Re: manual

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2022 at 6:00 PM Daniel Shahaf <d.s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The synopsis just says «{+|-}options», with "options" in var() markup.
>
> That's unusual: most synopses spell out all valid flags.

"No; it is too much.  Let me sum up."  -- Inigo Montoya

There was for a long time an effort made to keep the first-line
synopsis of each command short enough to fit on one line of "man"
output.  For a few commands that was impossible so we started adding
explicit line breaks with the expectation that the reader would
understand it was still all one command line.  For some others there
was no way to add a line break at a sensible place.

In this particular case (as you noted) there's an entire other section
already dedicated to the single-letter options that can be manipulated
with "set" and another for the long names for "set -o".

It might have been nice to be consistent about what was an "option"
and what was a "flag" or a "switch", but those terms are thrown around
colloquially with interpretation expected from context.