I use command line utilities frequently, and my fingers tend to be faster than my brain. My fingers have already decided on the options to enter before I remember what the options are. This works great for find or grep, but I always forget the correct options for cut, sort, or uniq.
I get the correct options by reading the help message output. My fingers race ahead, and enter the help switch with the least number of keystrokes:
$ uniq –h
uniq: invalid option — h
Try `uniq –help’ for more information.
Uh-oh, I got it wrong. Thankfully, the message tells me exactly what I did wrong, but I am left wondering why it couldn’t just display the help message in the first place. The output told me I should have typed (it seems rather smugly), so why not throw a guy a bone.