Re: Setting variable with getopts

[Dennis Williamson]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2021, 11:02 AM hancooper <hancooper@protonmail.com> wrote:

> ‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> On Monday, August 9, 2021 4:00 PM, hancooper <hancooper@protonmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> Add
> local OPTIND
> at the top of your function.
>
>
>
> It is peculiar to me that I do not need to define
> local OPTARG
> as well
>
>

For getopts an option either requires an argument or not. There is no
support for optional arguments although your code can handle the missing
argument error which is indicated by a colon as the option and OPTARG is
set to the option. You would need to set the first character of the
optstring to a colon so that error processing is silent.. If the option is
to have optional arguments you would process the case without an argument
specially.

status ()
{

local vrb=1
local shortopts=":Vuhp:"

while getopts $shortopts arg; do
  case $arg in

  # section omitted

    ("p")
      p="$OPTARG"
      printf '%s\n' "p, arg: $arg ; OPTARG: $OPTARG"
      ;;
    (:)
     case $OPTARG in
        (j) echo "this option has an optional argument, handle no arg here"
;;
        (*)
              echo "Current argument value, OPTARG: -$OPTARG" >&2
              echo "Must supply an argument to -$OPTARG" >&2
              ;;
        esac

# section omitted

  esac
done
shift "$OPTIND"

echo "p: $p"

}