How do you use getopt with multiple arguments?

How do you use getopt with multiple arguments?

1 Answer

  1. Put quotes around multiple arguments. In this case getopts will treat them as one argument, but you will be able to split it later on.
  2. Use comma (or other preferred character) as a delimiter. ./script -r 123,456,789.
  3. Allow multiple -r options.

What does getopt getopt return?

RETURN VALUE The getopt() function returns the next option character specified on the command line. A colon (:) is returned if getopt() detects a missing argument and the first character of optstring was a colon (:).

What does colon do in getopt?

If a letter is followed by a colon, the option is expected to have an argument, or group of arguments, which must be separated from it by white space. Each time it is invoked, getopts places the next option in the shell variable name and the index of the next argument to be processed in the shell variable OPTIND.

Does getopt change argv?

By default, getopt() permutes the contents of argv as it scans, so that eventually all the nonoptions are at the end.

What is Optind in getopt?

The variable optind is the index of the next element of argv to be processed. It is initialized to 1, and getopt() updates it as it processes each element of argv[]. The getopt() function returns the next option character (if one is found) from argv that matches a character in optstring, if any.

What is Optopt in getopt?

Description. The getopt() function parses the command-line arguments. Its arguments argc and argv are the argument count and array as passed to the main() function on program invocation. An element of argv that starts with ‘-‘ (and is not exactly “-” or “–“) is an option element.

What is the value of Optind?

The variable optind is the index of the next element to be processed in argv. The system initializes this value to 1.

What is Optarg getopt?

optarg indicates an optional parameter to a command line option. opterr can be set to 0 to prevent getopt() from printing error messages. optind is the index of the next element of the argument list to be process, and optopt is the command line option last matched.

How does getopt work in Unix?

For every option letter, getopts stores the option in the variable flag(declared just after the optstring), and iterates the loop. Every option letter followed by a colon expects an argument, which is stored in the variable OPTARG. If getopts was expecting an argument, but could not parse one, it prints an error.

What is getopt () in C?

The getopt() is one of the built-in C function that are used for taking the command line options. The syntax of this function is like below − getopt(int argc, char *const argv[], const char *optstring) The opstring is a list of characters. Each of them representing a single character option.

What is getopt in C with example?

getopt() function in C to parse command line arguments. The getopt() function is a builtin function in C and is used to parse command line arguments. Syntax: getopt(int argc, char *const argv[], const char *optstring) optstring is simply a list of characters, each representing a single character option.

How to remove-F option from getopts?

getopts options can only take zero or one argument. You might want to change your interface to remove the -f option, and just iterate over the remaining non-option arguments usage: foo.sh -i end -d dir -s subdir file […] Show activity on this post. With the space separator you can just run through it with a basic loop.

What is the return value of getopt?

Return Value: The getopt() function returns different values: If the option takes a value, that value is pointer to the external variable optarg. ‘-1’ if there are no more options to process.

How to specify a number of values for an option?

If you want to specify any number of values for an option, you can use a simple loop to find them and stuff them into an array. For example, let’s modify the OP’s example to allow any number of -s parameters: