(rcs.info)Common elements

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2.1 Common elements
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All RCS commands accept ‘--help’ and ‘--version’.  Note:
(standards)Command-Line Interfaces.

   Aside from ‘--help’ and ‘--version’, RCS commands take the form
‘-LETTER[ARG]’, i.e., a hyphen followed by a single letter, optionally
followed by extra information.  The square braces mean that the extra
information is optional.  (No square braces means that the extra
information is required.)  In any case, when specified, the extra
information *must* abut the letter; there can be no intervening
whitespace.

     co -u 1.4 foo   # wrong, space between -u and 1.4
     co -u1.4  foo   # ok

Furthermore, options must appear before file names (if any) on the
command line.

     ident foo -q    # wrong, option after file name
     ident -q foo    # ok

Lastly, pairs of RCS and working files can be specified in three ways:
(a) both are given, (b) only the working file is given, (c) only the RCS
file is given.  For (a), both RCS and working files may have arbitrary
directory components; RCS commands pair them up intelligently.  For (b),
RCS commands will look first into the directory ‘./RCS’, if it exists,
to find the associated RCS file.

Revision options

Date option

Description option

Substitution mode option

Log message option

Misc common options

Environment