As noted in section 4.1, options consisting of a capital letter are common across all tools. Many are specific to particular file types and they will be introduced as they arise. However, there are six options that are standard across all tools. Three of these have been mentioned already. The option -C is used to specify a configuration file name and the option -S is used to specify a script file name, whilst the option -D is used to display configuration settings.
The two remaining standard options provided directly by HSHELL are -A and -V. The option -A causes the current command line arguments to be printed. When running experiments via scripts, it is a good idea to use this option to record in a log file the precise settings used for each tool. The option -V causes version information for the tool and each module used by that tool to be listed. These should always be quoted when making bug reports.
Finally, all tools implement the trace option -T. Trace values are typically bit strings and the meaning of each bit is described in the reference section for each tool. Setting a trace option via the command line overrides any setting for that same trace option in a configuration file. This is a general rule, command line options always override defaults set in configuration files.
All of the standard options are listed in the final summary section of this chapter. As a general rule, you should consider passing at least -A -D -V -T 1 to all tools, which will guarantee that sufficient information is available in the tool output.