| This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (C version 6.1) (format=tex 98.7.5) 21 AUG 2003 20:18
Yes, this version of TeX predates --help and the like, so TeX just takes the string as input. If you feel like updating your TeX installation, check http://tug.org/tetex or http://tug.org/texlive. So I think texi2dvi should be changed to clean texput.log afterwards (or run tex --help in a temporary directory). I agree, I will work on that for the next release. Thanks.
