this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2025
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Shell Scripting

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This is a little tutorial that I found in my search to learn how to use getopt (mind: not getopts, which is a completely different thing). I want to share it here because I find it refreshingly to the point. Just the main code block already tells almost the whole story:

#!/bin/bash
# Set some default values:
ALPHA=unset
BETA=unset
CHARLIE=unset
DELTA=unset

usage()
{
  echo "Usage: alphabet [ -a | --alpha ] [ -b | --beta ]
                        [ -c | --charlie CHARLIE ] 
                        [ -d | --delta   DELTA   ] filename(s)"
  exit 2
}

PARSED_ARGUMENTS=$(getopt -a -n alphabet -o abc:d: --long alpha,bravo,charlie:,delta: -- "$@")
VALID_ARGUMENTS=$?
if [ "$VALID_ARGUMENTS" != "0" ]; then
  usage
fi

echo "PARSED_ARGUMENTS is $PARSED_ARGUMENTS"
eval set -- "$PARSED_ARGUMENTS"
while :
do
  case "$1" in
    -a | --alpha)   ALPHA=1      ; shift   ;;
    -b | --beta)    BETA=1       ; shift   ;;
    -c | --charlie) CHARLIE="$2" ; shift 2 ;;
    -d | --delta)   DELTA="$2"   ; shift 2 ;;
    # -- means the end of the arguments; drop this, and break out of the while loop
    --) shift; break ;;
    # If invalid options were passed, then getopt should have reported an error,
    # which we checked as VALID_ARGUMENTS when getopt was called...
    *) echo "Unexpected option: $1 - this should not happen."
       usage ;;
  esac
done

echo "ALPHA   : $ALPHA"
echo "BETA    : $BETA "
echo "CHARLIE : $CHARLIE"
echo "DELTA   : $DELTA"
echo "Parameters remaining are: $@"

Just be sure to correct the inadvertent mixing of beta and bravo.

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[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I still think my favorite shell, NuShell, handles this the best:

def alphabet [
    --alpha (-a)
    --charlie (-c): string    # comments on these lines are parsed and used for automatically generated --help flag
    --delta: int
    ...filenames: string
] { echo \$alpha }"

So much less boilerplate