getopts(1)                     DG/UX R4.11MU05                    getopts(1)


NAME
       getopts, getoptcvt - parse command options

SYNOPSIS
       getopts optstring name [arg ...]

       /usr/lib/getoptcvt [ -b ] file

DESCRIPTION
       getopts is used by shell procedures to parse positional parameters
       and to check for legal options.  It supports all applicable rules of
       the command syntax standard (see Rules 3-10, intro(1)).  It should be
       used in place of the getopt(1) command.  (See the CAUTIONS, below.)

       optstring must contain the option letters the command using getopts
       will recognize; 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 the option letter by white space.

       Each time it is invoked, getopts will place the next option in the
       shell variable name and the index of the next argument to be
       processed in the shell variable OPTIND.  Whenever the shell or a
       shell procedure is invoked, OPTIND is initialized to 1.

       When an option requires an option-argument, getopts places it in the
       shell variable OPTARG.

       If an illegal option is encountered, ? will be placed in name.

       When the end of options is encountered, getopts exits with a non-zero
       exit status.  The special option "--" may be used to delimit the end
       of the options in optstring.

       By default, getopts parses the positional parameters.  If extra
       arguments (arg ...)  are given on the getopts command line, getopts
       will parse them instead.

       /usr/lib/getoptcvt reads the shell script in file, converts it to use
       getopts(1) instead of getopt(1), and writes the results on the
       standard output.

       -b     the results obtained by running /usr/lib/getoptcvt will be
              portable to earlier releases of the DG/UX system.
              /usr/lib/getoptcvt modifies the shell script in file so that
              when the resulting shell script is executed, it determines at
              run time whether to invoke getopts(1) or getopt(1).

       So all new commands will adhere to the command syntax standard
       described in intro(1), they should use getopts(1) or getopt(3C) to
       parse positional parameters and check for options that are legal for
       that command (see CAUTIONS, below).

   International Features
       Characters from supplementary code sets can be read as the argument
       to optstring.

EXAMPLES
       The following fragment of a shell program 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 option-argument:

              while getopts abo: c
              do
                      case $c in
                      a | b)       FLAG=$c;;
                      o)      OARG=$OPTARG;;
                      \?)    echo $USAGE
                              exit 2;;
                      esac
              done
              shift `expr $OPTIND - 1`

       This code will accept any of the following as equivalent:

              cmd -a -b -o "xxx z yy" file
              cmd -a -b -o "xxx z yy" -- file
              cmd -ab -o xxx,z,yy file
              cmd -ab -o "xxx z yy" file
              cmd -o xxx,z,yy -b -a file

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

SEE ALSO
       intro(1), sh(1).
       getopt(3C).

CAUTIONS
       Although the following command syntax rule (see intro(1)) exceptions
       are permitted under the current implementation, they should not be
       used because they may not be supported in future releases of the
       operating system.  As in the EXAMPLES section above, a and b are
       options, and the option o requires an option-argument:

              cmd -aboxxx file  (Rule 5 violation:  options with
                    option-arguments must not be grouped with other options)
              cmd -ab -oxxx file  (Rule 6 violation:  there must be
                    white space after an option that takes an option-argument)

       Changing the value of the shell variable OPTIND or parsing different
       sets of arguments may lead to unexpected results.


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