Overall structure of CVS commands

The first release of cvs consisted of a number of shell-scripts. Today cvs is implemented as a single program that is a front-end to rcs and diff. The overall format of all cvs commands is:

cvs [ cvs_options ] cvs_command [ command_options ] [ command_args ]

cvs: The program that is a front-end to rcs.
cvs_options: Some options that affect all sub-commands of cvs. These are described below.
cvs_command: One of several different sub-commands. Some of the commands have aliases that can be used instead; those aliases are noted in the reference manual for that command. There are only two situations where you may omit `cvs_command': `cvs -H' elicits a list of available commands, and `cvs -v' displays version information on cvs itself.
command_options: Options that are specific for the command.
command_args: Arguments to the commands.

There is unfortunately some confusion between cvs_options and command_options. `-l', when given as a cvs_option, only affects some of the commands. When it is given as a command_option is has a different meaning, and is accepted by more commands. In other words, do not take the above categorization too seriously. Look at the documentation instead.

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