European date format option

The online documentation for SET says:

Running postmaster using the option -o -e to set dates to the
European convention.

but attempting to do this results in:

$ pg_ctl start -o -e
postmaster successfully started
$ /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster: illegal option -- e
Try '/usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster --help' for more information.

using:

template1=# select version();
version
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PostgreSQL 7.1.2 on sparc-sun-solaris2.7, compiled by GCC 2.8.1
(1 row)

Is this a bug in postmaster or in the documentation? Is there a
workaround (I need all the dates for all connections to be in
DD-MM-YYYY format)?

Nigel Gilbert