--recursive vs --recurse option

[Colin D Bennett]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:14:40 +0100
Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho at GMX.net> wrote:

> I am not that proficient in English, but my gut feeling tells me it
> should be --not-recursive instead of --no-recursive
> Are my guts wrong? ;-)

Your gut is right.  “Not recursive” is appropriate in English, but I
think the “no-” prefix is a general convention for command line options
in Unix/Linux/GNU that usually ignores the grammatical correctness
of the resulting option name.  Command line option parsers can then
automatically handle boolean options after being given only the
option's “base name”.

Regards,
Colin