The following paragraphs discuss rules for using options.
All options begin with a slash (/). (A dash, –, is not a valid option specifier for LINK.) You can specify an option with its full name or an abbreviation, up to the shortest sequence of characters that uniquely identifies the option (except for /DOSSEG). The description for each option shows the minimum legal abbreviation with the optional part enclosed in double brackets. No gaps or transpositions of letters are allowed. For example,
/B[[ATCH]]
indicates that either /B or /BATCH can be used, as can /BA, /BAT, or /BATC. Option names are not case sensitive (except for /r), so you can also specify /batch or /Batch. This chapter uses meaningful yet legal forms of the option names. If an option is followed by a colon (:) and an argument, no spaces can appear before or after the colon.
LINK options can appear on the command line, in response to a prompt, or as part of a field in a response file. They can also be specified in the LINK environment variable. (For more information, see “Setting Options with the LINK Environment Variable”.) Options can appear in any field before the last input, except as noted in the descriptions.
If an option appears more than once (for example, on the command line and in the LINK variable), the effect is the same as if the option was given only once. If two options conflict, the most recently specified option takes effect. This means that a command-line option or one given in response to a prompt overrides one specified in the LINK environment variable. For example, the command-line option /SEG:512 cancels the effect of the environment-variable option /SEG:256.
Some LINK options take numeric arguments. You can enter numbers either in decimal format or in standard C-language notation.