Many times when working with Linux systems, you may encounter an error message that says, “Command line option is not understood.” Though this error can be somewhat confusing, solving it is relatively easy. In this blog post, I will explain exactly how to solve this error, and reference a particular example of using the ls command.
Often, the error occurs when a user attempts to run a command without specifying the appropriate command line options. For instance, in order to list the contents of a directory with the ls command, you must specify at least one option to indicate the information you would like ls to provide. For example, if you wanted to list the contents of a directory and also view the owner and group associated with each file, you would use the command ls -l. To provide more detailed information about the files, you may use the options -lh or -lrt.
If no options are provided when executing a command, you will often receive the error message “command line option not understood”. This can usually be resolved by simply ensuring that you have provided the appropriate command line options when running the command. If you are unsure of the correct option to use, consult the man page for the command or check an online resource such as Linuxize. In our example here, the correct syntax for the command was ls -l, but we could have used any of the other supported options.
In conclusion, if you ever run into the error “command line option not understood”, make sure that you have included the necessary command line options when attempting to run the command. This will usually solve the issue, and ensure your commands run without issue.
