a bit more on getopt

[John Quarterman]

From: John Quarterman (moderator) <jsq at ut-sally.UUCP>
Topic: still more on command line arguments (getopt)

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From: seismo!nsc!idi!bene!luke!itkin (Steven List)
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 85 09:20:51 pdt
To: ut-sally.ARPA!std-unix
Subject: extraneous arguments
Organization: Benetics Corp, Mt. View, CA

>From: ihnp4!tektronix!uucp at ut-sally.ARPA
>Date: Saturday, 13 Jul 85 18:43:47 PDT
>Subject: What to do about extraneous arguments?
>
>Another aspect of command arguments is: after all the necessary arguments
>have been processed, what if some are left?
>

I'm in agreement with tektronix!rdoty.  I believe no program should produce
unexpected results without some explanation.  In the case of programs
like cmp and diff, a diagnostic AND a nonzero exit status would seem to
be appropriate.  The diagnostic message would tend to satisfy checks on
the size of the output being nonzero, and the status would satisfy
status checks.

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Date: Wed, 17 Jul 85 12:00:54 cdt
From: neuro1!baylor!peter at rice.uucp (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Re: command line arguments
References: <245 at mcc-db.UUCP>

> Date: Mon, 8 Jul 85 00:52:46 pdt
> From: nsc!turtlevax!ken at ihnp4.UUCP (Ken Turkowski)
> Subject: Re: command line arguments
> 
> Someone suggested that parsing arguments in shell scripts was difficult.
> I include the following shell scripts, one for the Bourne shell and one
> for the C-shell, which parse arguments of the form:
> 	-v -O -o outfile file1 file2 file3
> as well as
> 	-vOooutfile file1 file2 file3
> 

Sure, you can make shell scripts do almost anything. When I get a source with
that sort of stuff in it I generally rip it out & put up with weirdness. Why?
Well, our system is badly overloaded. Commands like that take 30 seconds to
a minute to start up!

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Date: Wed, 17 Jul 85 12:04:53 cdt
From: neuro1!baylor!peter at rice.uucp (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Re: command line arguments
References: <246 at mcc-db.UUCP>

> > I doubt the necessity and even the wisdom of seperating an argument from
> > the option by whitespace.
> 
> As I recall it, the AT&T standard does it this way on the grounds of
> readability, not necessity.  The "-t/dev/tty" example is an easy one
> to pick out, but what about "-dfaglop"?  Which of those letters are
> options, and which are an option argument?

OK, instead of forcing whitespace, how about requiring that there only be one
flag if you are going to do this sort of stuff? I have had shell scripts
totally broken by this requirement, and workarounds take up so much overhead
(yes, some people have systems smaller than vaxen) that it's not worth the
hassle.

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John Quarterman,   UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo,harvard,gatech}!ut-sally!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET:  jsq at ut-sally.ARPA, soon to be jsq at sally.UTEXAS.EDU