I'm making a small program in C that deals with a lot of command line arguments, so I decided to use getopt to sort them for me.
However, I want two non-option arguments (source and destination files) to be mandatory, so you have to have them as arguments while calling the program, even if there's no flags or other arguments.
Here's a simplified version of what I have to handle the arguments with flags:
while ((c = getopt(argc, argv, "i:d:btw:h:s:")) != -1) {
switch (c) {
case 'i': {
i = (int)atol(optarg);
}
case 'd': {
d = (int)atol(optarg);
}
case 'b':
buf = 1;
break;
case 't':
time = 1;
break;
case 'w':
w = (int)atol(optarg);
break;
case 'h':
h = (int)atol(optarg);
break;
case 's':
s = (int)atol(optarg);
break;
default:
break;
}
}
How do I edit this so that non-option arguments are also handled?
I also want to be able to have the non-options either before or after the options, so how would that be handled?
getopt
sets the optind
variable to indicate the position of the next argument.
Add code similar to this after the options loop:
if (argv[optind] == NULL || argv[optind + 1] == NULL) {
printf("Mandatory argument(s) missing\n");
exit(1);
}
Edit:
If you want to allow options after regular arguments you can do something similar to this:
while (optind < argc) {
if ((c = getopt(argc, argv, "i:d:btw:h:s:")) != -1) {
// Option argument
switch (c) {
case 'i': {
i = (int)atol(optarg);
}
case 'd': {
d = (int)atol(optarg);
}
case 'b':
buf = 1;
break;
case 't':
time = 1;
break;
case 'w':
w = (int)atol(optarg);
break;
case 'h':
h = (int)atol(optarg);
break;
case 's':
s = (int)atol(optarg);
break;
default:
break;
}
else {
// Regular argument
<code to handle the argument>
optind++; // Skip to the next argument
}
}
Really good example could be found here: GNU Libc The code:
#include <ctype.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int
main (int argc, char **argv)
{
int aflag = 0;
int bflag = 0;
char *cvalue = NULL;
int index;
int c;
opterr = 0;
while ((c = getopt (argc, argv, "abc:")) != -1)
switch (c)
{
case 'a':
aflag = 1;
break;
case 'b':
bflag = 1;
break;
case 'c':
cvalue = optarg;
break;
case '?':
if (optopt == 'c')
fprintf (stderr, "Option -%c requires an argument.\n", optopt);
else if (isprint (optopt))
fprintf (stderr, "Unknown option `-%c'.\n", optopt);
else
fprintf (stderr,
"Unknown option character `\\x%x'.\n",
optopt);
return 1;
default:
abort ();
}
printf ("aflag = %d, bflag = %d, cvalue = %s\n",
aflag, bflag, cvalue);
for (index = optind; index < argc; index++)
printf ("Non-option argument %s\n", argv[index]);
return 0;
}
It allows to have options before and after arguments. I did compile and run test example:
$ ./a.out aa ff bb -a -ctestparam hello
aflag = 1, bflag = 0, cvalue = testparam
Non-option argument aa
Non-option argument ff
Non-option argument bb
Non-option argument hello
The GNU Libc example is also not working for MinGW-W64 7.1.0.
The non-option arguments are not shifted to the end so that the parsing stops after the first non-option arguments.
So the default permutation option seems not to work.