Re: Syntax Question...

[Linda Walsh]

` Dennis Williamson wrote:
> >     
>
>  Also, it's usually not necessary to maintain an index variable
> and use shift in a while loop. Use "for arg; do" which uses an implied
> $@.
>   
   I tried to implement your suggestion and quickly ran into the reasons
why I did what I did. 

   Using the 'for x;do' format, 1 argument can't 'swallow up the next'.
This has to happen in the case of a single letter option that if
followed by it's argument -- so yeah, could set a flag and catch it
through on a another loop, but easier just to do another 'shift' and
pull the next arg.

   2nd, the counter was for the non-intercepted cmdline values.   The
option parser only removes options it knows about and returns the rest
to the caller -- I used the counter to index that array, w/slightly
less typing & complexity than in an earlier design I had 2 counters
- one for the input and one for the output  as they would differ
as soon as some params weren't copied to the output array -- but
then went with the paradigm you saw, as it allowed me have flags that
took values, grab them, immediately, rather than setting a flag
for a next loop.

I could have used:

   array_name[${array_name[*]}]="new value"...

instead of a counter, but, the counter was already there from the previous
version and less untidy looking.