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getopts(1)
NAME
getopts - Parses utility options
SYNOPSIS
getopts optstring name [arg...]
STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards
as follows:
getopts: XCU5.0
Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about
industry standards and associated tags.
OPTIONS
None
OPERANDS
optstring
A string containing the option characters recognized by the utility
invoking getopts. If a character is followed by a colon (:), the
option is expected to have an argument, which should be supplied as a
separate argument. Applications should specify an option character and
its option-argument as separate arguments, but getopts interprets the
characters following an option character requiring arguments as an
argument whether or not this is done. An explicit null option-argument
is not recognized if it is not supplied as a separate argument when
getopts is invoked. The characters question-mark (?) and colon (:)
must not be used as option characters by an application. The use of
other option characters that are not alphanumeric produces unspecified
results. If the option-argument is not supplied as a separate argument
from the option character, the value in OPTARG is stripped of the
option character and the hyphen (-). The first character in optstring
determines getopts behavior if an option character is not known or an
option-argument is missing.
name
The name of a shell variable that is set by the getopts utility to the
option character that was found.
The getopts utility by default parses positional parameters passed to the
invoking shell procedure. If args are given, they are parsed instead of the
positional parameters.
DESCRIPTION
The getopts utility is used to retrieve flags and flag-arguments from a
list of parameters.
Each time it is invoked, the getopts utility places the value of the next
flag in the shell variable specified by the name operand and the index of
the next argument to be processed in the shell variable OPTIND. Whenever
the shell is invoked, OPTIND is initialized to 1.
When the flag requires a flag-argument, the getopts utility places it in
the shell variable OPTARG. If no flag is found, or if the flag found does
not have a flag-argument, OPTARG is unset.
If a flag character not contained in the optstring operand is found where a
flag character is expected, the shell variable specified by name is set to
the question-mark (?) character. In this case, if the first character in
optstring is a colon (:), the shell variable OPTARG is set to the flag
character found, but no output is written; otherwise, the shell variable
OPTARG is unset and a diagnostic message written. This condition is
considered to be an error detected in the way arguments were presented to
the invoking application, but is not an error in getopts processing.
If a flag-argument is missing, then:
· If the first character of optstring is a colon, the shell variable
specified by name is set to the colon (:) character and the shell
variable OPTARG is set to the flag character found.
· Otherwise, the shell variable specified by name is set to the
question-mark (?) character, the shell variable OPTARG is unset, and a
diagnostic message is written to standard error. This condition is
considered to be an error detected in the way arguments were presented
to the invoking application, but is not an error in getopts
processing; a diagnostic message is written as stated, but the exit
status is zero.
When the end of flags is encountered the getopts utility exits with:
· A return value greater than zero
· The shell variable OPTIND set to the index of the first non-flag-
argument, where the first -- argument is considered to be a flag-
argument if there are no other non-flag-arguments appearing before it,
or the value $# + 1 if there are no non-flag-arguments
· The name variable set to the question-mark (?) character
Any of the following identifies the end of flags:
· The special flag --
· Finding an argument that does not begin with a -
· Encountering an error
The shell variables OPTIND and OPTARG are local to the caller of getopts
and are not exported by default.
The shell variable specified by the name operand, OPTIND and OPTARG affect
the current shell execution environment.
If the application sets OPTIND to the value 1, a new set of parameters can
be used: either the current positional parameters or new arg values. Any
other attempt to invoke getopts multiple times in a single shell execution
environment with parameters (positional parameters or flag operands) that
are not the same in all invocations, or with an OPTIND value modified to be
a value other than 1, produces unspecified results.
NOTES
1. If getopts is called in a subshell or separate utility execution
environment, such as one of the following it will not affect the shell
variables in the caller's environment:
(getopts abc value "$@")
nohup getopts ...
2. Shell functions share OPTIND with the calling shell even though the
positional parameters are changed. Functions that want to use getopts
to parse their arguments will usually want to save the value of OPTIND
on entry and restore it before returning. However, there are cases
when a function will want to change OPTIND for the calling shell.
RESTRICTIONS
The getopts command is implemented as a shell built-in command. It is only
available to users of the Korn (ksh) and POSIX shells.
A similar capability is available to Bourne and C shell users with the
getopt command.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 An option, specified or unspecified by optstring, was found. Successful
completion.
>0 The end of options was encountered or an error occurred.
EXAMPLES
The following example script parses and displays its arguments:
aflag=
bflag=
while getopts ab: name
do
case $name in
a) aflag=1;;
b) bflag=1
bval="$OPTARG";;
?) printf "Usage: %s: [-a] [-b value] args\n" $0
exit 2;;
esac
done
if [ ! -z "$aflag" ]; then
printf "Option -a specified\n"
fi
if [ ! -z "$bflag" ]; then
printf 'Option -b "%s" specified\n' "$bval"
fi
shift $(($OPTIND - 1))
printf "Remaining arguments are: %s\n" "$*"
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect the execution of getopts:
LANG
Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that
are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value
from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization
variables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of
the variables had been defined.
LC_ALL
If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the
other internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPE
Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of
text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to
multibyte characters in arguments and input files).
LC_MESSAGES
Determines the locale used to affect the format and contents of
diagnostic messages written to standard error.
NLSPATH
Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of
LC_MESSAGES.
OPTARG
On exit, this variable will contain the value of a flag-argumentm if
one was found, otherwise it is unset.
OPTIND
This variable is used by the getopts utility as the index of the next
argument to be processed.
SEE ALSO
Commands: getopt(1), ksh(1), sh(1p)
Routines: getopt(3)
Standards: standards(5)
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