Ron Johnson <ronljohnsonjr@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 10:41 AM David G. Johnston < > david.g.johnston@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> I'm thinking that the forced ordering being different than what is >> documented is a shell-specific issue. As for why only one of restart, >> stop, start, etc... can be specified for any given invocation of pg_ctl, >> that seems like an entirely realistic limitation and typo-preventing >> feature. > The error message is "pg_ctl: *too many command-line arguments*". It's > manifestly obvious that the command failed when I added a "-" option, not a > "start", "stop" command. and yet pg_ctl complained about command-line > arguments. The program's coding expects that optional switches will appear before the action specifier. You can get away with writing the action first only if the version of getopt_long() that's in use will permute the argument array to move non-options to the end. That's always true on glibc-based platforms, but otherwise usually not, at least in PG v14. (Yes, I'm aware that pg_ctl's --help message claims this works everywhere. It's lying.) Having said that, the most obvious way to explain the results you seem to be getting is that you're using a version of getopt_long() that tries to permute the arguments and is getting it wrong. So, what's the platform? And are you quite sure your psql is v14? regards, tom lane
