Todd Vierling wrote about Re: bin/5166: newer (RIPE?) whois servers like -options passed to them:
:On 16 Mar 1998 mason@primenet.com.au wrote:
:: 	Newer whois servers, probably based on the RIPE one, handle
:: 	internally many different flags, eg.  -i, -m, -M, -a, etc.
:: 	We should ignore any such options and pass them through.  The
:: 	only one that we take notice of is   -h host  which must be the
:: 	first option.
:What's wrong with the getopt terminator `--'?:
:  whois -h whois.ripe.net -- -m stuff...
:That terminates argument parsing and passes the switches right on down the
:line.

I probably should have mentioned that I'm well aware of `--' as a terminator
for getopt, though I didn't think it necessarily the best thing for most
users.  However, I also think that moving away from getopt is ugly, so
these options are somewhat conflicting.  I'm beginning to agree that maybe
this would be better addressed as a note in the man page.  I'll leave that
to someone else :-)

:option and a whois server option.  (Maybe this is best established as a
:documentation change-request, to update the manpage to include this
:situation.)
:If this solves your problem, please say so and I'll close the PR. 
:Otherwise, the topic is still open to discussion.... 
-- 
Geoff Wing   <gcw@pobox.com>            Mobile : blown up, in for repairs
Work URL: http://www.primenet.com.au/   Ego URL: http://pobox.com/~gcw/