Package: libc6 Version: 2.3.5-9 When using UTF-8 locales, getopt prints the error message in a wrong way, if a wrong multibyte character was given as an option. Start an utf-8 terminal: $ LC_ALL=en_GB.UTF-8 uxterm -fn -Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--20-200-75-75-C-100-ISO10646-1 Then run ls there: $ ls -ö ls: invalid option -- Try ls --help' for more information. It prints only the first byte of the multibyte character.