## 1.2 Parsing Conventions

This section describes how the arguments are acquired and what basic syntax is used for parsing them.

### 1.2.1 Parsing of CGI Arguments

The CGI always passes arguments as name/value pairs, where the name is separated from the value by an equals sign and the individual pairs are separated by ampersands.

Boolean options option may be given as option`=yes` or option`=no`. Option names may be abbreviated, as long as they remain unambiguous.

### 1.2.2 Parsing of Command Lines

We distinguish between long option names and single character options. Long options are given as `--`option or `--`option`=`value; option names may be abbreviated as long as they remain unambiguous. Single-character options are given as `-`x, eventually followed by a value. Several single-character options may be combined, e. g., `-xy` means `-x -y` (provided `x` does not take an argument). The argument to a single-character option may be attached to the option character, i. e., you can write `-`x value or `-`x`` value.

Boolean options option may be given as `--`option (meaning `true`) or `--no` option (meaning `false`). A single hyphen `-` by itself is not considered to be an option and thus is returned unchanged. Parsing stops at a double hyphen `--` appearing by itself; the double hyphen itself does not appear in the output.

In the case of an unrecognized long option name or single-character option, or of an ambiguous long option prefix, an error is raised.