[TriLUG] [OT] "Usage:" syntax?

[Don Jerman]

On 6/25/08, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Gurus: where is the syntax of "Usage:" strings documented?
>

Usage: is the lazy programmer's way of saying RTFM to the user that
gets it wrong.  It typically repeats the "Synopsis" section of the
man(1) page.  See the man page for man-pages(7).  While that specifies
some typography conventions, programmers have had to ignore some of
them or come up with non-standard notation where the relevant terminal
controls aren't available.

The relevant section, from Debian Sid:

SYNOPSIS      briefly describes the command or function's interface.  For
                     commands, this shows the syntax of the command
and its arguments
                     (including options); boldface is used for as-is
text and italics
                     are used to indicate replaceable arguments.  Brackets ([])
                     surround optional arguments, vertical bars (|)
separate choices,
                     and ellipses (...) can be repeated.  For
functions, it shows any
                     required data declarations or #include
directives, followed by
                     the function declaration.