script/public-inbox-compact |  9 ++++-----
 script/public-inbox-convert | 14 +++++---------
 script/public-inbox-index   | 10 ++++------
 script/public-inbox-init    |  7 +++----
 script/public-inbox-xcpdb   |  8 +++-----

diff --git a/script/public-inbox-compact b/script/public-inbox-compact
index a6bb62bd4c266c3f052e6e649952cf6c9a003c1e..dfebac1ceead671c98c9a27505ccbf1812b8e0fe 100755
--- a/script/public-inbox-compact
+++ b/script/public-inbox-compact
@@ -4,10 +4,9 @@ # License: AGPL-3.0+ <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
 use strict;
 use v5.10.1;
 use Getopt::Long qw(:config gnu_getopt no_ignore_case auto_abbrev);
-my $usage = 'public-inbox-compact INBOX_DIR';
 my $opt = { compact => 1, -coarse_lock => 1 };
 my $help = <<EOF; # the following should fit w/o scrolling in 80x24 term:
-Usage: $usage
+usage: public-inbox-compact INBOX_DIR
 
   Compact Xapian DBs in an inbox
 
@@ -18,10 +17,10 @@   --jobs=NUM          control parallelization
 
 See public-inbox-compact(1) man page for full documentation.
 EOF
-GetOptions($opt, qw(all help|?),
+GetOptions($opt, qw(all help|h),
 	# compact options:
 	qw(jobs|j=i quiet|q blocksize|b=s no-full|n fuller|F),
-) or die "bad command-line args\n$usage\n";
+) or die $help;
 if ($opt->{help}) { print $help; exit 0 };
 
 require PublicInbox::Admin;
@@ -31,7 +30,7 @@
 require PublicInbox::InboxWritable;
 require PublicInbox::Xapcmd;
 my @ibxs = PublicInbox::Admin::resolve_inboxes(\@ARGV, $opt);
-unless (@ibxs) { print STDERR "Usage: $usage\n"; exit 1 }
+unless (@ibxs) { print STDERR $help; exit 1 }
 foreach (@ibxs) {
 	my $ibx = PublicInbox::InboxWritable->new($_);
 	PublicInbox::Xapcmd::run($ibx, 'compact', $opt);
diff --git a/script/public-inbox-convert b/script/public-inbox-convert
index 4ff198d1947e3ceeb3063b32ef0fa6aab9606ee6..017411fb0d126b890115dabed97d4dac440f0ffe 100755
--- a/script/public-inbox-convert
+++ b/script/public-inbox-convert
@@ -4,9 +4,8 @@ # License: AGPL-3.0+ <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
 use strict;
 use v5.10.1;
 use Getopt::Long qw(:config gnu_getopt no_ignore_case auto_abbrev);
-my $usage = 'Usage: public-inbox-convert [options] OLD NEW';
 my $help = <<EOF; # the following should fit w/o scrolling in 80x24 term:
-usage: $usage
+usage: public-inbox-convert [options] OLD NEW
 
   convert v1 format inboxes to v2
 
@@ -15,9 +14,8 @@
   --no-index          do not index after conversion
   --jobs=NUM          set shards (NUM=0)
   --verbose | -v      increase verbosity (may be repeated)
-  --help | -?         show this help
 
-index options (see public-inbox-index(1) manpage for full description):
+index options (see public-inbox-index(1) man page for full description):
 
   --no-fsync          speed up indexing, risk corruption on power outage
   -L LEVEL            `basic', `medium', or `full' (default: full)
@@ -35,19 +33,17 @@ 	# index defaults:
 	quiet => -1, compact => 0, maxsize => undef, fsync => 1,
 	reindex => 1, # we always reindex
 };
-GetOptions($opt, qw(jobs|j=i index! help|?),
+GetOptions($opt, qw(jobs|j=i index! help|h),
 		# index options
 		qw(verbose|v+ rethread compact|c+ fsync|sync!
 		indexlevel|index-level|L=s max_size|max-size=s
 		batch_size|batch-size=s
 		sequential_shard|sequential-shard|seq-shard
-		)) or die <<EOF;
-bad command-line args\n$usage
-EOF
+		)) or die $help;
 if ($opt->{help}) { print $help; exit 0 };
 my $old_dir = shift(@ARGV) // '';
 my $new_dir = shift(@ARGV) // '';
-die $usage if (scalar(@ARGV) || $new_dir eq '' || $old_dir eq '');
+die $help if (scalar(@ARGV) || $new_dir eq '' || $old_dir eq '');
 die "$new_dir exists\n" if -d $new_dir;
 die "$old_dir not a directory\n" unless -d $old_dir;
 
diff --git a/script/public-inbox-index b/script/public-inbox-index
index cb11075e2b9202f851c35e98690bc8c63b34da8c..5dad6ecb5dfb5bb1d47552736aa143e3875a1471 100755
--- a/script/public-inbox-index
+++ b/script/public-inbox-index
@@ -8,9 +8,8 @@
 use strict;
 use v5.10.1;
 use Getopt::Long qw(:config gnu_getopt no_ignore_case auto_abbrev);
-my $usage = 'public-inbox-index [options] INBOX_DIR';
 my $help = <<EOF; # the following should fit w/o scrolling in 80x24 term:
-usage: $usage
+usage: public-inbox-index [options] INBOX_DIR
 
   Create and update search indices
 
@@ -28,7 +27,6 @@   --reindex           index previously indexed data (if upgrading)
   --rethread          regenerate thread IDs (if upgrading, use sparingly)
   --prune             prune git storage on discontiguous history
   --verbose | -v      increase verbosity (may be repeated)
-  --help | -?         show this help
 
 BYTES may use `k', `m', and `g' suffixes (e.g. `10m' for 10 megabytes)
 See public-inbox-index(1) man page for full documentation.
@@ -39,8 +37,8 @@ 		fsync|sync! xapian_only|xapian-only
 		indexlevel|index-level|L=s max_size|max-size=s
 		batch_size|batch-size=s
 		sequential_shard|seq-shard|sequential-shard
-		skip-docdata all help|?))
-	or die "bad command-line args\n$usage";
+		skip-docdata all help|h))
+	or die $help;
 if ($opt->{help}) { print $help; exit 0 };
 die "--jobs must be >= 0\n" if defined $opt->{jobs} && $opt->{jobs} < 0;
 if ($opt->{xapian_only} && !$opt->{reindex}) {
@@ -54,7 +52,7 @@
 my $cfg = PublicInbox::Config->new; # Config is loaded by Admin
 my @ibxs = PublicInbox::Admin::resolve_inboxes(\@ARGV, $opt, $cfg);
 PublicInbox::Admin::require_or_die('-index');
-unless (@ibxs) { print STDERR "Usage: $usage\n"; exit 1 }
+unless (@ibxs) { print STDERR $help; exit 1 }
 
 my $mods = {};
 foreach my $ibx (@ibxs) {
diff --git a/script/public-inbox-init b/script/public-inbox-init
index 037e8e56409bfd229aad25371f0c3461708b0e54..ae4a575ca3ba80423fcc0fa0579256a0386baacb 100755
--- a/script/public-inbox-init
+++ b/script/public-inbox-init
@@ -5,9 +5,8 @@ use strict;
 use v5.10.1;
 use Getopt::Long qw/:config gnu_getopt no_ignore_case auto_abbrev/;
 use Fcntl qw(:DEFAULT);
-my $usage = 'public-inbox-init NAME INBOX_DIR HTTP_URL ADDRESS [ADDRESS..]';
 my $help = <<EOF; # the following should fit w/o scrolling in 80x24 term:
-usage: $usage
+usage: public-inbox-init NAME INBOX_DIR HTTP_URL ADDRESS [ADDRESS..]
 
   Initialize a public-inbox
 
@@ -44,10 +43,10 @@ 	'skip-artnum=i' => \$skip_artnum,
 	'j|jobs=i' => \$jobs,
 	'ng|newsgroup=s' => \$ng,
 	'skip-docdata' => \$skip_docdata,
-	'help|?' => \$show_help,
+	'help|h' => \$show_help,
 );
 my $usage_cb = sub {
-	print STDERR "Usage: $usage\n";
+	print STDERR $help;
 	exit 1;
 };
 GetOptions(%opts) or $usage_cb->();
diff --git a/script/public-inbox-xcpdb b/script/public-inbox-xcpdb
index 2bfadc092a0ecb4b8941389107b7f45c0d6201cb..84620175eafc863f30d53ef01cc11654813b2bdc 100755
--- a/script/public-inbox-xcpdb
+++ b/script/public-inbox-xcpdb
@@ -4,9 +4,8 @@ # License: AGPL-3.0+ <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
 use strict;
 use v5.10.1;
 use Getopt::Long qw(:config gnu_getopt no_ignore_case auto_abbrev);
-my $usage = 'Usage: public-inbox-xcpdb [options] INBOX_DIR';
 my $help = <<EOF; # the following should fit w/o scrolling in 80x24 term:
-usage: $usage
+usage: public-inbox-xcpdb [options] INBOX_DIR
 
   upgrade or reshard Xapian DB(s) used by public-inbox
 
@@ -18,7 +17,6 @@   --reshard=NUM       change number the number of shards
   --jobs=NUM          limit parallelism to JOBS count
   --verbose | -v      increase verbosity (may be repeated)
   --sequential-shard  copy+index Xapian shards sequentially (for slow HDD)
-  --help | -?         show this help
 
 index options (see public-inbox-index(1) man page for full description):
 
@@ -35,7 +33,7 @@ 	max_size|max-size=s batch_size|batch-size=s
 	sequential_shard|seq-shard|sequential-shard
 	jobs|j=i quiet|q verbose|v
 	blocksize|b=s no-full|n fuller|F
-	all help|?)) or die "bad command-line args\n$usage";
+	all help|h)) or die $help;
 if ($opt->{help}) { print $help; exit 0 };
 
 use PublicInbox::Admin;
@@ -44,7 +42,7 @@
 require PublicInbox::Config;
 my $cfg = PublicInbox::Config->new;
 my @ibxs = PublicInbox::Admin::resolve_inboxes(\@ARGV, $opt, $cfg) or
-	die $usage;
+	die $help;
 my $idx_env = PublicInbox::Admin::index_prepare($opt, $cfg);
 
 # we only set XAPIAN_FLUSH_THRESHOLD for index, since cpdb doesn't