[userbinator]

Actually most of them are quite consistent since POSIX published guidelines for it - and the only inconsistencies are historical exceptions:

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_...

(I'm not so convinced that long options are a good thing, as evidenced by the --extended-regexp/--regexp-extended and other little "was it spelt this way or that?" type of confusions. It's not hard to remember single letters, especially if they're mnemonic.)

[pimlottc]

Long options are very nice to use in scripts as they are somewhat self-documenting. Compare:

    curl -kLIiso example.org www.example.org

versus:

    curl --insecure --location --head --include --silent --output example.org www.example.rog

And of course as a practical matter, with short opts you'll run out of characters eventually, and meaningful mnemonics before that.