getopt man page on SunOS

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getopt(1)			 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 explicitly,
       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

       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 attributes:

       ┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
       │      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     │	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   │
       ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │Availability		     │SUNWcsu			   │
       ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │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	 stan‐
       dard  (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

       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 optstring (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 recog‐
       nizes -a as an option. For this case,  the  for	loop  in  the  example
       shifts past the filename argument.

SunOS 5.10			  7 Jan 2000			     getopt(1)
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