system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
- and -- in console programs

Why some paraneters are prefixed with - and why others prefixed with --  when you use a console program?
gpt
It doesn't intrinsically mean anything - it's up to the program author what arguments they accept and how they want to parse them.

However it's a fairly standard convention (in Unix/Linux at least) that `-` is used for short single letter options and `--` for longer options, and there is often a short and long version of the same option, e.g. you often have `-h` and `--help`.

You will still sometimes find programs which don't conform to this though, and might have an option like `-help` - only way to be sure what options are available is to read the programs help however that's available (via `man`, `--help`, a readme etc)