Manual Pages for UNIX Operating System command usage for man getopt

User Commands                                           getopt(1)



NAME
     getopt - parse command options

SYNOPSIS
     set -- ` getopt optstring $ * `


DESCRIPTION
     The getopts command supersedes getopt. For more information,
     see NOTES below.


     getopt is used to break up options in command lines for easy
     parsing  by shell procedures and to check for legal options.
     optstring is a string  of  recognized  option  letters;  see
     getopt(3C).  If  a  letter  is  followed by a colon (:), the
     option is expected to have an argument which may or may  not
     be separated from it by white space. The special option - is
     used to delimit the end of the options. If it is used expli-
     citly, getopt recognizes it; otherwise, getopt generates it;
     in either case, getopt places it at the end of the  options.
     The positional parameters ($1 $2 ...) of the shell are reset
     so that each option is preceded by a - and  is  in  its  own
     positional  parameter;  each  option argument is also parsed
     into its own positional parameter.

EXAMPLES
     Example 1 Processing the arguments for a command


     The following code fragment shows how one might process  the
     arguments  for a command that can take the options -a or -b,
     as well as the option -o, which requires an argument:


       set -- `getopt abo: $*`
       if [ $? != 0 ]
       then
                  echo $USAGE
                  exit 2
       fi
       for i in $*
       do
                  case $i in
                  -a | -b)     FLAG=$i; shift;;
                  -o)           OARG=$2; shift 2;;
                  --)           shift; break;;
                  esac
       done






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User Commands                                           getopt(1)



     This code accepts any of the following as equivalent:


       cmd -aoarg filename1 filename2
       cmd -a -o arg filename1 filename2
       cmd -oarg -a filename1 filename2
       cmd -a -oarg -- filename1 filename2



ATTRIBUTES
     See attributes(5) for descriptions of the  following  attri-
     butes:



     ____________________________________________________________
    |       ATTRIBUTE TYPE        |       ATTRIBUTE VALUE       |
    |_____________________________|_____________________________|
    | Availability                | SUNWcs                      |
    | CSI                         | enabled                     |
    |_____________________________|_____________________________|


SEE ALSO
     Intro(1),       getopts(1),       getoptcvt(1),       sh(1),
     shell_builtins(1), getopt(3C), attributes(5)

DIAGNOSTICS
     getopt prints an error message on the standard error when it
     encounters an option letter not included in optstring.

NOTES
     getopt will not be supported in the next major release.  For
     this  release  a  conversion tool has been provided, namely,
     getoptcvt.  For  more  information,   see   getopts(1)   and
     getoptcvt(1).


     Reset optind to 1 when rescanning the options.


     getopt does not support the part of Rule 8  of  the  command
     syntax  standard  (see  Intro(1))  that  permits  groups  of
     option-arguments following an  option  to  be  separated  by
     white space and quoted. For example,

       cmd -a -b -o "xxx z yy" filename







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User Commands                                           getopt(1)



     is not handled correctly. To correct  this  deficiency,  use
     the getopts command in place of getopt.


     If an option that takes an option-argument is followed by  a
     value  that is the same as one of the options listed in opt-
     string (referring to the earlier EXAMPLES section, but using
     the following command line:

       cmd -o -a filename




     getopt always treats it as  an  option-argument  to  -o;  it
     never  recognizes  -a  as  an option. For this case, the for
     loop in the example shifts past the filename argument.






































SunOS 5.11           Last change: 7 Jan 2000                    3