Re: Coding conventions -- command line option vs command-line option

[Sandra Loosemore <sandra at codesourcery dot com>]

Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Sep 2007, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
>
> > And now to the most important issue of all to address before we can
> > release GCC 4.3.0. ;-)
> >
> > In our current documentation we have both "command-line option" and
> > "command line option".  Like other such cases, we should make a choice
> > and document this in codingconventions.html.
> >
> > I am willing to take care of that, and also adjusting our web pages 
> > accordingly.  The question now is: which of the two variants shall we 
> > go for?
>
> As an adjective I think it should be "command-line"; I'm sure Sandra will 
> correct me if I'm wrong here.

As an adjective immediately preceding the noun it modifies, yes, it 
should be hyphenated:  "command-line option".  But if you use "command 
line" as a noun, use the unhyphenated form; e.g., "use the -foo option 
on the command line".

-Sandra