PSConfig: helpful tool, unhelpful error messages

Earlier this week, I needed to set up a MOSS development box.  Piece of cake, right?  Well, I must have been really tired from the long weekend, because when I used PSConfig to pre-create the configuration database, the following error stopped me dead in my tracks:

“The -cmd command is invalid.”

For those of you not familiar with PSConfig.exe, it's a nice little built-in utility that allows you to create your configuration database and admin content database with a pre-determined name instead of the unholy string of nonsense that MOSS autogenerates.  You can run from in the /bin folder under the 12 hive, with the following syntax (all on one line):

Psconfig.exe -cmd configdb -create -server <SQL_Server_Name> -database <New_Config_Database_Name> -user <domain\Database_Access_Account> -password <Database_Access_Password> -admincontentdatabase <New_Admin_Content_Database_Name>

Be sure to replace the angle-bracketed parameters with the correct values.

Normally this works like a charm, and if not, the resulting error message will tell you what needs changing.  In my haste, however, I had copy/pasted the string from a web page and filled in my own values.  The result was that I had some non-standard hyphens, and that made the whole thing choke.  The solution?  Delete all the hyphen (dash) characters and re-type them.  Problem solved.