I discovered that the "=" sign in freshclam option is mandatory. For example:

freshclam --datadir=c:\temp\database (with =)

and

freshclam --datadir c:\temp\database (without =)

are different. In the latter, the option "--datadir c:\temp\database" is ignored as if it were not specified.

On the other hand, the "=" in clamscan option is optional, i.e.

clamscan --log=c:\tmp\my.log

and

clamscan --log c:\tmp\my.log

are equivalent.

I would like to get a confirmation that this is true, and secondly to get an opinion if this is a bug, as far as I know, the = in option should be optional.