[uudecode]

Negative coding. Eliminate cruft. Drop "features". Go small. Stop modifying the same program to do more. Finish.

Open to interpretation but that's my take. You use the word "elegance" and I think that's the idea. Alas, software usually does not "evolve" toward elegance.

tr -h | wc

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

$ tr -h

tr: illegal option -- h

usage: tr [-Ccsu] string1 string2

       tr [-Ccu] -d string1

       tr [-Ccu] -s string1

       tr [-Ccu] -ds string1 string2

[uudecode]

That's GNU, I'm guessing. BSD is a little different.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

TR(1) BSD General Commands Manual TR(1)

[uudecode]

FreeBSD. Got it. But not OpenBSD, NetBSD, or Solaris. Interesting how even with a relatively simple utility like tr, changes were made.