What does '-- --daemon' mean in start-stop-daemon?

Question

On this man page for start-stop-daemon, there is an example:

  start-stop-daemon --start --oknodo --user food --name food --pidfile \
     /var/run/food.pid --startas /usr/sbin/food --chuid food -- --daemon

Can anyone explain what the last couple of items mean (i.e. the "-- --daemon" part)? It doesn't seem to be covered in the rest of the document and I'm confused by it.

Answer 1

From the same man page link you provide in your question:

COMMANDS
-S, --start [--] arguments
...
Any arguments given after -- on the command line are passed unmodified to the program being started.

So --daemon will be passed onto /usr/sbin/food in your example.