getops-alternative

Argument parsing for command line scripts in linux

This function will:

Store the original data in a globally available variable called "$ORIGINAL_LINE" Extract all operands by retrieving all data received before a "-" sign (which marks the start of option and option arguments). Note: This is opposite to the guideline 9 of Utility Syntax Guidelines IEEE Std 1003.1. Save all operands in a variable called $POSITIONAL Count the number of operands and store the result in a variable called $POSITIONAL_NUM Store all option and option-arguments received in the variable $ALL_PARAMETERS Loop trough all options and their respective arguments creating for each a variable PARAM_${VARIABLE_NAME} that contains the arguments (if any) and another called PARAM_NUM_${VARIABLE_NAME} with the number of elements received. A working example is:

If a script to deploy configuration called deployConf.ksh is invoked like this:

./ deployConf.ksh default -d on -q tx01 tx02 --group group1 group2 –p

And inside the script the options are passed on to the argParser function:

argParser "default -d on -q tx01 tx02 --group group1 group2 –p"

The below variables are created for the developer to handle them as required

POSITIONAL=default POSITIONAL_NUM=1 PARAM_d=on PARAM_NUM_d=1 PARAM_group=group1 group2 PARAM_NUM_group=2 PARAM_q=tx01 tx02 PARAM_NUM_q=2 PARAM_p= PARAM_NUM_p=0

The base standard followed for the development of the tool is the same as getopts: POSIX.1-2008 Utility Syntax Guidelines IEEE Std 1003.1, but there are differences on the guidelines followed to accommodate my purposes.