That’s not really git specific. Many programs use the following convention:
- single-letter parameter: one dash
- multi-letter parameter: two dashes
This is handy, because it allows you to specify many single-letter parmeters at once with a single dash and all letters of the parameters you need: ls -al
is equivalent to ls -a -l
.
Often, one-letter parameters are the most used ones and can have a longer equivalent with two dashes: for example git add -v
and git add --verbose
mean the same.