The long-form flags generally attempt to be descriptive whereas their short variants rarely are — for instance the Assistance may return a command such as:
grep -RInswC 2 -m 10 -Z -e "work" .
the same command with more readable long-form options:
grep --recursive --binary-files=without-match --line-number --no-messages --word-regexp --context=2 --max-count=10 --null --regexp="work" .
For instance the tldr-pages program allows users to set which variant they prefer (--short-options or --long-options).
People who rarely blindly run commands and/or don't extensively memorise the options for CLI software they are working with will benefit. No more "please break this all down" follow-up questions!
