[lug] standards for command line arguments?

[D. Stimits]

Does anyone here know if there exists a technically precise standard or 
recommendation for UNIX style command line options? I'm looking for 
something comprehensive, that includes such argument options as "-" to 
tell the app to stop processing further text as an argument, or the "--" 
argument on a startx line that tells startx to pass along (unaltered) 
everything after the solo "--". I know there is something like the POSIX 
1b standard for "Unix" style, and Linux has its LFS, but something that 
guides how command line arguments should be *formatted* to work in a 
standard way seems to be more tradition than standards. I'm not 
satisfied with the C "getopts" function, nor with other wrappers, and am 
working on my own C++ argument handling class (yes, I am bored, and it 
seems light-weight C++ argument parsing classes don't exist or have 
unacceptable other problems).

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com