Standard utilities notation for SYNOPSIS sections

Question

I want to construct a program utility synopsis for optional comma separated keywords.

utility [KEYWORD[,KEYWORD]...]

I worder where I should put the repeating pattern ....

I want to allow the following usage

utility
utility keyword
utility keyword,keyword
utility keyword,keyword,keyword 
and so on

I'm not sure I understand this correctly, but if you're looking for advice on programming, you should try Stack Overflow — Peregrino69, Feb 08 '23 at 02:57
I want to construct the program synopsis for the documentation of my program. — Vera, Feb 08 '23 at 03:36

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 08 '23 at 07:38

I think the style you're proposing is very clear and you should use it.

The documentation of allowable arguments isn't well-specified anywhere, it builds on conventions, and I'd argue that your solution fits these conventions relatively well.

For comparison, the useradd man page uses

-G, --groups GROUP1[,GROUP2,...[,GROUPN]]]

and I think that is actively more confusing than what you are doing! So stick with yours.

Standard utilities notation for SYNOPSIS sections

1 Answers1