11.1 The Structure of a Query
The general format of a query is:
[optional query flag [optional query flag argument]] <query argument>
The query flags may be before or after the query argument.
Many query flags have a short and long format. The short format is:
-short_query_flag [optional query flag argument]
for example, -B dw-ripe
The long format is:
--long_query_flag [optional query flag argument]
for example, --no-filtering dw-ripe
When a query includes many query flags, the short and long format options may be mixed. You may list each query flag separately, for example:
-B –i tech-c --no-grouping DW-RIPE
You can also group short query flags together. The long query flags must always be separated. When short flags are grouped, only the last flag in a group may have a flag argument, as in:
-Bi TECH-c --no-grouping dw-RIPE
The query argument is not case-sensitive. As shown in the examples above, it can be in upper case, lower case or a mixed case. Query flags are case-sensitive. This applies to both short- and long-format flags. However, the arguments to the query flags are not case-sensitive. There can be an optional space between a query flag and its argument. However, if the query flag argument is a list, there can be no spaces between elements of the list.
-rBG –Tinetnum,inet6num –imb ripe-ncc-hm-mnt
-rBG –T inetnum,inet6num –i MB ripe-ncc-hm-mnt
A list of query flags and query flag arguments are available.