I just wish that in the early UNIX days they reserved some of the flags to mean one thing only, and required all commands to have them (where it made sense). Like:
-r recursive (i.e., it should always be recursive mode if a command operates on files, and should always exist if it makes sense for that command)
-v verbose
-s sort
-i ignore case
-q quiet (suppress output)
If there were, say, 20 well-chosen standard flags (and they were enforced) it could have given the UNIX tools another level of nice regularity.
-r recursive (i.e., it should always be recursive mode if a command operates on files, and should always exist if it makes sense for that command)
-v verbose
-s sort
-i ignore case
-q quiet (suppress output)
If there were, say, 20 well-chosen standard flags (and they were enforced) it could have given the UNIX tools another level of nice regularity.