Diff for "BashFAQ/035"

How can I handle command-line arguments (options) to my script easily?

Well, that depends a great deal on what you want to do with them. There are several approaches, each with its strengths and weaknesses.

Manual loop

This approach handles any arbitrary set of options, because you're writing the parser yourself. For 90% of programs, this is the simplest approach (because you rarely need fancy stuff).

This example will handle a combination of short and long options. Notice how both "--file" and "--file=FILE" are handled.

   1 #!/bin/sh
   2 # (POSIX shell syntax)
   3 
   4 # Reset all variables that might be set
   5 file=""
   6 verbose=0
   7 
   8 while :
   9 do
  10     case $1 in
  11         -h | --help | -\?)
  12             #  Call your Help() or usage() function here.
  13             exit 0      # This is not an error, User asked help. Don't do "exit 1"
  14             ;;
  15         -f | --file)
  16             file=$2     # You might want to check if you really got FILE
  17             shift 2
  18             ;;
  19         --file=*)
  20             file=${1#*=}        # Delete everything up till "="
  21             shift
  22             ;;
  23         -v | --verbose)
  24             # Each instance of -v adds 1 to verbosity
  25             verbose=$((verbose+1))
  26             shift
  27             ;;
  28         --) # End of all options
  29             shift
  30             break
  31             ;;
  32         -*)
  33             echo "WARN: Unknown option (ignored): $1" >&2
  34             shift
  35             ;;
  36         *)  # no more options. Stop while loop
  37             break
  38             ;;
  39     esac
  40 done
  41 
  42 # Suppose some options are required. Check that we got them.
  43 
  44 if [ ! "$file" ]; then
  45     echo "ERROR: option '--file FILE' not given. See --help" >&2
  46     exit 1
  47 fi
  48 
  49 # Rest of the program here.
  50 # If there are input files (for example) that follow the options, they
  51 # will remain in the "$@" positional parameters.

This parser does not handle separate options concatenated together (like -xvf being understood as -x -v -f). This could be added with effort, but this is left as an exercise for the reader.

Some Bash programmers like to write this at the beginning of their scripts to guard against unused variables:

    set -u     # or, set -o nounset

The use of this breaks the loop above, as "$1" may not be set upon entering the loop. There are four solutions to this issue:

1. Stop using -u.

2. Replace case $1 in with case ${1+$1} in (as well as bandaging all the other code that set -u breaks).

3. Replace case $1 in with case ${1-} in (every potentially undeclared variable could be written as ${variable-} to prevent set -u tripping).

4. Stop using -u.

getopts

Unless it's the version from util-linux, and you use its advanced mode, never use getopt(1). Traditional versions of getopt cannot handle empty argument strings, or arguments with embedded whitespace.

The POSIX shell (and others) offer getopts which is safe to use instead. Here is a simplistic getopts example:

   1 #!/bin/sh
   2 
   3 # Initialize our own variables:
   4 output_file=""
   5 verbose=0
   6 
   7 OPTIND=1 # Reset is necessary if getopts was used previously in the script.  It is a good idea to make this local in a function.
   8 while getopts "hvf:" opt; do
   9     case "$opt" in
  10         h)
  11             show_help
  12             exit 0
  13             ;;
  14         v)  verbose=1
  15             ;;
  16         f)  output_file=$OPTARG
  17             ;;
  18         '?')
  19             show_help >&2
  20             exit 1
  21             ;;
  22     esac
  23 done
  24 shift $((OPTIND-1)) # Shift off the options and optional --.
  25 
  26 echo "verbose=$verbose, output_file='$output_file', Leftovers: $@"
  27 
  28 # End of file

The advantages of getopts are:

1. It's portable, and will work in any POSIX shell e.g. dash.

2. It can handle things like -vf filename in the expected Unix way, automatically.

3. It understands -- as the option terminator and more generally makes sure options are parse like for any standard command.

4. With some implementations, the error messages will be localised in the language of the user.

The disadvantage of getopts is that (except for ksh93 getopts) it can only handle short options (-h, not --help) without trickery and cannot handle options with optional arguments à la GNU.

There is a getopts tutorial which explains what all of the syntax and variables mean. In bash, there is also help getopts, which might be informative.

There is also still the disadvantage that options are coded in at least 2, probably 3 places - in the call to getopts, in the case statement that processes them and presumably in the help message that you are going to get around to writing one of these days. This is a classic opportunity for errors to creep in as the code is written and maintained - often not discovered till much, much later. This can be avoided by using callback functions, but this approach kind of defeats the purpose of using getopts at all.

1. getopts long option trickery

Here is an example which claims to parse long options with getopts. The basic idea is quite simple: just put "-:" into the optstring. This trick requires a shell which permits the option-argument (i.e. the filename in "-f filename") to be concatenated to the option (as in "-ffilename") as POSIX requires. The POSIX standard says you should pass arguments to options as separate options (to avoid problems with empty arguments) but requires getopts to handle the case where the argument is stuck to the option in the same argument. However, POSIX leaves the behaviour unspecified when an option is not alpha-numerical, so POSIX does not guarantee this to work. However, it should work in all of bash, dash, yash, zsh and all implementations of ksh, the only exception reported so far being posh.

   1 #!/bin/bash
   2 # Uses bash extensions.  Not portable as written.
   3 
   4 optspec=":h-:"
   5 
   6 while getopts "$optspec" optchar
   7 do
   8     case "${optchar}" in
   9         -)
  10             case "${OPTARG}" in
  11               loglevel)
  12                   eval val="\$${OPTIND}"; OPTIND=$(( $OPTIND + 1 ))
  13                   echo "Parsing option: '--${OPTARG}', value: '${val}'" >&2
  14                   ;;
  15               loglevel=*)
  16                   val=${OPTARG#*=}
  17                   opt=${OPTARG%=$val}
  18                   echo "Parsing option: '--${opt}', value: '${val}'" >&2
  19                   ;;
  20             esac
  21             ;;
  22         h)
  23             echo "usage: $0 [--loglevel[=]<value>]" >&2
  24             exit 2
  25             ;;
  26     esac
  27 done
  28 
  29 # End of file

In practice, this example is so obfuscated that it may be preferable to add concatenated option support (like -vf filename) to a manual parsing loop instead, if that was the only reason for using getopts.

Here's an improved and more generalized version of above attempt to add support for long options when using getopts:

   1 #!/bin/bash
   2 # Uses bash extensions.  Not portable as written.
   3 
   4 declare -A longoptspec
   5 longoptspec=( [loglevel]=1 ) #use associative array to declare how many arguments a long option expects, in this case we declare that loglevel expects/has one argument, long options that aren't listed in this way will have zero arguments by default
   6 optspec=":h-:"
   7 while getopts "$optspec" opt; do
   8 while true; do
   9     case "${opt}" in
  10         -) #OPTARG is name-of-long-option or name-of-long-option=value
  11             if [[ "${OPTARG}" =~ .*=.* ]] #with this --key=value format only one argument is possible
  12             then
  13                 opt=${OPTARG/=*/}
  14                 OPTARG=${OPTARG#*=}
  15                 ((OPTIND--))
  16             else #with this --key value1 value2 format multiple arguments are possible
  17                 opt="$OPTARG"
  18                 OPTARG=(${@:OPTIND:$((longoptspec[$opt]))})
  19             fi
  20             ((OPTIND+=longoptspec[$opt]))
  21             continue #now that opt/OPTARG are set we can process them as if getopts would've given us long options
  22             ;;
  23         loglevel)
  24           loglevel=$OPTARG
  25             ;;
  26         h|help)
  27             echo "usage: $0 [--loglevel[=]<value>]" >&2
  28             exit 2
  29             ;;
  30     esac
  31 break; done
  32 done
  33 
  34 # End of file

With this version you can have long and short options side by side and you shouldn't need to modify the code from line 10 to 22. This solution can also handle multiple arguments for long options, just use ${OPTARG} or ${OPTARG[0]} for the first argument, ${OPTARG[1]} for the second argument, ${OPTARG[2]} for the third argument and so on. It has the same disadvantage of its predecessor in not being portable and specific to bash. Additionally, it breaks arguments with whitespace (line 18) for long options, when given using the syntax that does not include equal sign (=).

Silly repeated brute-force scanning

Another approach is to check options with if statements "on demand". A function like this one may be useful:

   1 #!/bin/bash
   2 
   3 HaveOpt ()
   4 {
   5     local needle=$1
   6     shift
   7 
   8     while [[ $1 == -* ]]
   9     do
  10         # By convention, "--" means end of options.
  11         case "$1" in
  12             --)      return 1 ;;
  13             $needle) return 0 ;;
  14         esac
  15 
  16         shift
  17     done
  18 
  19     return 1
  20 }
  21 
  22 HaveOpt --quick "$@" && echo "Option quick is set"
  23 
  24 # End of file

and it will work if script is run as:

• YES: ./script --quick
• YES: ./script -other --quick

but will stop on first argument with no "-" in front (or on --):

• NO: ./script -bar foo --quick
• NO: ./script -bar -- --quick

Of course, this approach (iterating over the argument list every time you want to check for one) is far less efficient than just iterating once and setting flag variables.

It also spreads the options throughout the program. The literal option --quick may appear a hundred lines down inside the main body of the program, nowhere near any other option name. This is a nightmare for maintenance.

Complex nonstandard add-on utilities

bhepple suggests the use of process-getopt (GPL licensed) and offers this example code:

PROG=$(basename $0)
VERSION='1.2'
USAGE="A tiny example using process-getopt(1)"

# call process-getopt functions to define some options:
source process-getopt

SLOT=""
SLOT_func()   { [ "${1:-""}" ] && SLOT="yes"; }      # callback for SLOT option
add_opt SLOT "boolean option" s "" slot

TOKEN=""
TOKEN_func()  { [ "${1:-""}" ] && TOKEN="$2"; }      # callback for TOKEN option
add_opt TOKEN "this option takes a value" t n token number

add_std_opts     # define the standard options --help etc:

TEMP=$(call_getopt "$@") || exit 1
eval set -- "$TEMP" # just as with getopt(1)

# remove the options from the command line
process_opts "$@" || shift "$?"

echo "SLOT=$SLOT"
echo "TOKEN=$TOKEN"
echo "args=$@"

Here, all information about each option is defined in one place making for much easier authoring and maintenance. A lot of the dirty work is handled automatically and standards are obeyed as in getopt(1) - because it calls getopt for you.

• Actually, what the author forgot to say was that it's actually using getopts semantics, rather than getopt. I ran this test:

   ~/process-getopt-1.6$ set -- one 'rm -rf /' 'foo;bar' "'"
   ~/process-getopt-1.6$ call_getopt "$@"
    -- 'rm -rf /' 'foo;bar' ''\'''

• It appears to be intelligent enough to handle null options, whitespace-containing options, and single-quote-containing options in a manner that makes the eval not blow up in your face. But this is not an endorsement of the process-getopt software overall; I don't know it well enough. -GreyCat

It's written and tested on Linux where getopt(1) supports long options. For portability, it tests the local getopt(1) at runtime and if it finds an non-GNU one (ie one that does not return 4 for getopt --test) it only processes short options. It does not use the bash builtin getopts(1) command. -bhepple

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