Why I use long parameter names in scripts

The other day, I posted about a script I'd written that found the longest commit message in a repository.

As I couldn't find a native way to do this with Git, the script loops over each commit in the repository, calculates its length and stores the length and commit SHA in a file.

The lines in the file are sorted so the longest commit is first.

Whilst I commonly use short parameters, such as git add -p when typing commands, in scripts, I prefer to use the equivalent longer parameters, where possible.

For example, in the script, I execute this command to sort the lines:

sort "${result_file}" --reverse --numeric-sort --output "${result_file}"

This could be re-written as:

sort "${result_file}" -rn -o "${result_file}"

Whilst the original is more verbose and longer to type, I prefer its verbosity which makes it easier for me or others to read and understand in the future.