Boy, this discussion is getting really complicated. That's a sign that it is time to STOP! and think it all over :-)
We're going to guess the order of operations based on arguments, except when we ignore the argument order of operations, because we think we're smarter than the user? And then we're going to reread the file and ....
I'm an old unix buzzard. Our philosophy was, processes are cheap. That's why things like ls | grep are deemed acceptable.
Tools do one thing (or one thing at a time) and do it well. flashrom is getting radically over-engineered.
Please rethink this.
flashrom -e -- erase flashrom -r -- read flashrom -w -- write flashrom -v -- verify
flashrom -any combination -- mistake
Otherwise, no matter how you set this up, you're going to violate somebody's principle of least surprise. This thread already shows how.
If you want more than one thing done, that's what scripts are for :-)
thanks
ron