The xml output commands: --xml --noxml
are positional arguments. Zbar tools allow things like: zbarimg --xml foo.img --noxml bar.img Yet, I agree that this doesn't make much sense. Just added a patch upstream that will parse first all output control arguments first (--xml, --noxml and --raw) and use the same format for all parsed images: https://github.com/mchehab/zbar/commit/dd1208423ef5dd592c10925985d4e477ccff7fd3 Thanks, Mauro