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       This  manual  page  is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux implementation of
       this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux  manual  page  for  details  of
       Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME

       getopts — parse utility options

SYNOPSIS

       getopts optstring name [arg...]

DESCRIPTION

       The getopts utility shall retrieve options and option-arguments from a list of parameters.
       It shall support the Utility Syntax Guidelines 3 to 10, inclusive, described in  the  Base
       Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.

       Each  time  it is invoked, the getopts utility shall place the value of the next option in
       the shell variable specified by the name operand and the index of the next argument to  be
       processed  in  the  shell variable OPTIND.  Whenever the shell is invoked, OPTIND shall be
       initialized to 1.

       When the option requires an option-argument, the getopts utility shall  place  it  in  the
       shell  variable  OPTARG.  If no option was found, or if the option that was found does not
       have an option-argument, OPTARG shall be unset.

       If an option character not contained in the optstring operand is  found  where  an  option
       character is expected, the shell variable specified by name shall be set to the <question-
       mark> ('?')  character. In this case, if the first character in  optstring  is  a  <colon>
       (':'), the shell variable OPTARG shall be set to the option character found, but no output
       shall be written to standard error; otherwise, the shell variable OPTARG  shall  be  unset
       and  a  diagnostic  message  shall  be  written to standard error. This condition shall be
       considered to be an error detected in the way arguments were  presented  to  the  invoking
       application, but shall not be an error in getopts processing.

       If an option-argument is missing:

        *  If the first character of optstring is a <colon>, the shell variable specified by name
           shall be set to the <colon> character and the shell variable OPTARG shall  be  set  to
           the option character found.

        *  Otherwise,  the  shell  variable specified by name shall be set to the <question-mark>
           character, the shell variable OPTARG shall be unset, and a diagnostic message shall be
           written  to standard error. This condition shall be considered to be an error detected
           in the way arguments were presented to the invoking application, but shall not  be  an
           error  in getopts processing; a diagnostic message shall be written as stated, but the
           exit status shall be zero.

       When the end of options is encountered, the getopts utility shall exit with a return value
       greater  than  zero;  the  shell  variable  OPTIND  shall be set to the index of the first
       operand, or the value "$#"+1 if there are no operands; the name variable shall be  set  to
       the <question-mark> character. Any of the following shall identify the end of options: the
       first "−−" argument that is not an option-argument, finding an argument  that  is  not  an
       option-argument and does not begin with a '−', or encountering an error.

       The  shell  variables  OPTIND and OPTARG shall be local to the caller of getopts and shall
       not be exported by default.

       The shell variable specified by the name operand, OPTIND,  and  OPTARG  shall  affect  the
       current shell execution environment; see Section 2.12, Shell Execution Environment.

       If the application sets OPTIND to the value 1, a new set of parameters can be used: either
       the current positional parameters or new arg values. Any other attempt to  invoke  getopts
       multiple  times  in  a  single  shell  execution  environment  with parameters (positional
       parameters or arg operands) that are not the same in all invocations, or  with  an  OPTIND
       value modified to be a value other than 1, produces unspecified results.

OPTIONS

       None.

OPERANDS

       The following operands shall be supported:

       optstring A  string  containing  the  option characters recognized by the utility invoking
                 getopts.  If a character is followed by a <colon>, the option shall be  expected
                 to  have  an  argument,  which  should  be  supplied  as  a  separate  argument.
                 Applications should specify an  option  character  and  its  option-argument  as
                 separate  arguments,  but  getopts  shall  interpret the characters following an
                 option character requiring arguments as an argument whether or not this is done.
                 An explicit null option-argument need not be recognized if it is not supplied as
                 a separate argument when getopts is invoked. (See  also  the  getopt()  function
                 defined  in  the  System  Interfaces  volume  of  POSIX.1‐2008.)  The characters
                 <question-mark> and <colon> shall  not  be  used  as  option  characters  by  an
                 application.  The  use  of  other  option  characters  that are not alphanumeric
                 produces unspecified results. If  the  option-argument  is  not  supplied  as  a
                 separate  argument  from  the  option  character,  the  value in OPTARG shall be
                 stripped of the option character and the '−'.  The first character in  optstring
                 determines how getopts behaves if an option character is not known or an option-
                 argument is missing.

       name      The name of a shell variable that shall be set by the  getopts  utility  to  the
                 option character that was found.

       The  getopts  utility  by default shall parse positional parameters passed to the invoking
       shell procedure. If args are given,  they  shall  be  parsed  instead  of  the  positional
       parameters.

STDIN

       Not used.

INPUT FILES

       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of getopts:

       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or
                 null.  (See  the  Base  Definitions  volume  of   POSIX.1‐2008,   Section   8.2,
                 Internationalization   Variables  for  the  precedence  of  internationalization
                 variables used to determine the values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL    If set to a non-empty string  value,  override  the  values  of  all  the  other
                 internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE  Determine  the  locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data
                 as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte  characters  in
                 arguments and input files).

       LC_MESSAGES
                 Determine  the  locale  that should be used to affect the format and contents of
                 diagnostic messages written to standard error.

       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.

       OPTIND    This variable shall be used by the getopts utility as  the  index  of  the  next
                 argument to be processed.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

       Default.

STDOUT

       Not used.

STDERR

       Whenever  an  error  is detected and the first character in the optstring operand is not a
       <colon> (':'), a diagnostic message shall be written to standard error with the  following
       information in an unspecified format:

        *  The  invoking  program  name  shall be identified in the message. The invoking program
           name shall be the value of the shell special parameter 0 (see Section  2.5.2,  Special
           Parameters) at the time the getopts utility is invoked. A name equivalent to:

               basename "$0"

           may be used.

        *  If  an  option  is found that was not specified in optstring, this error is identified
           and the invalid option character shall be identified in the message.

        *  If an option requiring an option-argument is found,  but  an  option-argument  is  not
           found,  this  error  shall  be  identified  and  the invalid option character shall be
           identified in the message.

OUTPUT FILES

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

       None.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values shall be returned:

        0    An option, specified or unspecified by optstring, was found.

       >0    The end of options was encountered or an error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS

       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE

       Since getopts affects the current shell execution environment, it is generally provided as
       a  shell  regular  built-in.  If  it is called in a subshell or separate utility execution
       environment, such as one of the following:

           (getopts abc value "$@")
           nohup getopts ...
           find . −exec getopts ... \;

       it does not affect the shell variables in the caller's environment.

       Note that shell functions share OPTIND with the calling shell even though  the  positional
       parameters  are  changed.  If  the  calling shell and any of its functions uses getopts to
       parse arguments, the results are unspecified.

EXAMPLES

       The following example script parses and displays its arguments:

           aflag=
           bflag=
           while getopts ab: name
           do
               case $name in
               a)    aflag=1;;
               b)    bflag=1
                     bval="$OPTARG";;
               ?)   printf "Usage: %s: [−a] [−b value] args\n" $0
                     exit 2;;
               esac
           done
           if [ ! −z "$aflag" ]; then
               printf "Option −a specified\n"
           fi
           if [ ! −z "$bflag" ]; then
               printf 'Option −b "%s" specified\n' "$bval"
           fi
           shift $(($OPTIND  1))
           printf "Remaining arguments are: %s\n$*"

RATIONALE

       The getopts utility was chosen in preference  to  the  System  V  getopt  utility  because
       getopts handles option-arguments containing <blank> characters.

       The  OPTARG variable is not mentioned in the ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES section because it does
       not affect the execution of getopts; it is one of the few ``output-only''  variables  used
       by the standard utilities.

       The <colon> is not allowed as an option character because that is not historical behavior,
       and it violates the Utility Syntax Guidelines. The <colon> is now specified to  behave  as
       in  the  KornShell version of the getopts utility; when used as the first character in the
       optstring  operand,  it  disables  diagnostics  concerning  missing  option-arguments  and
       unexpected  option  characters.  This  replaces  the  use  of the OPTERR variable that was
       specified in an early proposal.

       The formats of the diagnostic messages produced by the getopts utility  and  the  getopt()
       function  are  not  fully specified because implementations with superior (``friendlier'')
       formats objected to the formats used by  some  historical  implementations.  The  standard
       developers  considered  it  important that the information in the messages used be uniform
       between getopts and getopt().  Exact duplication of the messages might  not  be  possible,
       particularly  if  a  utility  is  built  on  another  system that has a different getopt()
       function, but the messages must have specific information included  so  that  the  program
       name, invalid option character, and type of error can be distinguished by a user.

       Only  a  rare application program intercepts a getopts standard error message and wants to
       parse it. Therefore, implementations are free to choose the most usable messages they  can
       devise. The following formats are used by many historical implementations:

           "%s: illegal option −− %c\n", <program name>, <option character>

           "%s: option requires an argument −− %c\n", <program name>, \
               <option character>

       Historical  shells  with  built-in  versions  of  getopt()  or getopts have used different
       formats, frequently not even indicating the option character found in error.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       None.

SEE ALSO

       Section 2.5.2, Special Parameters

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter  8,  Environment  Variables,  Section
       12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines

       The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2008, getopt()

COPYRIGHT

       Portions  of  this  text  are  reprinted  and  reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std
       1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology  --  Portable  Operating  System
       Interface  (POSIX),  The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc  and  The  Open  Group.   (This  is
       POSIX.1-2008  with  the  2013  Technical  Corrigendum  1  applied.)  In  the  event of any
       discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open  Group  Standard,  the
       original  IEEE  and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard
       can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most  likely  to  have
       been  introduced  during  the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report
       such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .