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IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" .\" Copyright 2018 Jason King .\" Copyright 2018, Joyent, Inc. .\" Copyright 2020 Oxide Computer Company .\" .Dd August 10, 2020 .Dt GETOPT_LONG 3C .Os .Sh NAME .Nm getopt_long , .Nm getopt_long_clip , .Nm getopt_long_only .Nd get long options from command line argument list .Sh SYNOPSIS .In getopt.h .Vt extern char *optarg ; .Vt extern int optind ; .Vt extern int optopt ; .Vt extern int opterr ; .Ft int .Fo getopt_long .Fa "int argc" .Fa "char * const *argv" .Fa "const char *optstring" .Fa "const struct option *longopts" .Fa "int *longindex" .Fc .Ft int .Fo getopt_long_only .Fa "int argc" .Fa "char * const *argv" .Fa "const char *optstring" .Fa "const struct option *longopts" .Fa "int *longindex" .Fc .Ft int .Fo getopt_long_clip .Fa "int argc" .Fa "char * const *argv" .Fa "const char *optstring" .Fa "const struct option *longopts" .Fa "int *longindex" .Fc .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Fn getopt_long function is similar to .Xr getopt 3C but it accepts options in two forms: short options and long options. Short options are the traditional option flags that use a hyphen followed by a single character. This is the only form of option that is portable and it is supported by .Xr getopt 3C . Note, some implementation of .Xr getopt 3C do support non-standard extensions for long options; however, these are not portable and not considered in this manual page. Common example of short options are: .Fl a , .Fl l , and .Fl r . Long options use two hyphen characters are generally full words. The long versions of the above might be: .Fl -all , .Fl -list , and .Fl -recursive . .Pp The .Fn getopt_long function can be used to: .Bl -enum .It Support an option with both short and long forms. .It Support an option with only a short form. .It Support an option with only a long form. .El .Pp To have a short option selected, as with .Xr getopt 3C , it must be listed in .Fa optstring . Long options are instead listed in the .Fa longopts array. For an option to have both a short and long form it must be present in both .Fa optstring and .Fa longopts . .Pp Long options can be handled in two different ways. In the first way, every long option understood by the program has a corresponding short option, and the option structure is only used to translate from long options to short options. When used in this fashion, .Fn getopt_long behaves identically to .Xr getopt 3C . This is a good way to add long option processing to an existing program with the minimum of rewriting. .Pp In the second mechanism, a long option sets a flag in the .Vt option structure passed, or will store a pointer to the command line argument in the .Vt option structure passed to it for options that take arguments. Additionally, the long option's argument may be specified as a single argument with an equal sign, e.g., .Pp .Dl "myprogram --myoption=somevalue" .Pp When a long option is processed, the call to .Fn getopt_long will return 0. For this reason, long option processing without shortcuts is not backwards compatible with .Xr getopt 3C . .Pp It is possible to combine these methods, providing for long options processing with short option equivalents for some options. Less frequently used options would be processed as long options only. .Pp In .Fn getopt_long and .Fn getopt_long_only , .Fa optstring acts similar to .Fa optstring in .Xr getopt 3C , listing the set of supported short option flags. In addition, .Fa optstring can begin with .Ql + or .Ql - . If .Fa optstring begins with .Ql + , the first non-option terminates option processing. This is equivalent to setting the environment variable .Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT . If .Fa optstring begins with .Ql - , non-options are treated as options to the argument .Ql \e1 . .Pp If .Fa optstring does not begin with .Ql + and .Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT is not set, if .Ql W\&; appears in .Fa optstring , .Ql "-W myoption" is treated the same as .Ql "--myoption" and .Va optarg is set to .Ql myoption . .Pp In .Fn getopt_long_clip , .Ql + and .Ql - are ignored at the beginning of a string. .Pp The .Fn getopt_long , .Fn getopt_long_only , and .Fn getopt_long_clip functions require a structure to be initialized describing the long options. The structure is: .Bd -literal -offset indent struct option { char *name; int has_arg; int *flag; int val; }; .Ed .Pp The .Fa name field should contain the option name without the leading double hyphen. .Pp The .Fa has_arg field should be one of: .Pp .Bl -tag -width ".Dv optional_argument" -offset indent -compact .It Dv no_argument no argument to the option is expected .It Dv required_argument an argument to the option is required .It Dv optional_argument an argument to the option may be presented .El .Pp If .Fa flag is not .Dv NULL , then the integer pointed to by it will be set to the value in the .Fa val field and .Va optopt will be set to .Sy 0 . If the .Fa flag field is .Dv NULL , then the .Fa val field will be returned and .Va optopt is set to the value in the .Fa val field. Setting .Fa flag to .Dv NULL and setting .Fa val to the corresponding short option will make this function act just like .Xr getopt 3C . .Pp If the .Fa longindex field is not .Dv NULL , then the integer pointed to by it will be set to the index of the long option relative to .Fa longopts . .Pp The last element of the .Fa longopts array has to be filled with zeroes. .Pp The .Fn getopt_long_only function behaves identically to .Fn getopt_long with the exception that long options may start with .Ql - in addition to .Ql -- . If an option starting with .Ql - does not match a long option but does match a single-character option, the single-character option is returned. .Pp The .Fn getopt_long_clip function is a variation of .Fn getopt_long except that options must also adhere to the Sun CLIP specification. Specifically, the major differences from .Fn getopt_long are: .Bl -bullet -offset indent .It All option arguments are required .Po .Dv optional_argument is treated the same as .Dv required_argument .Pc . .It Long options cannot be abbreviated on the command line. .It Long options must use a double hyphen .Pq Ql -- . .It Option processing stops at the first non-option. .It All long options must have an equivalent short option (single character) and vice-versa. .It A leading .Ql + or .Ql - in .Fa optstring is ignored. .Fa optstring is treated as if it began after the leading .Ql + or .Ql - . .El .Pp On each call to .Fn getopt_long , .Fn getopt_long_only , or .Fn getopt_long , .Va optind is set to the .Va argv index of the .Em next argument to be processed. .Va optind is initialized to .Sy 1 prior to the first invocation of .Fn getopt_long , .Fn getopt_long_only , or .Fn getopt_long_clip . .Pp If .Va opterr is set to a non-zero value and .Fa optstring does not start with .Ql \&: , .Fn getopt_long , .Fn getopt_long_only , and .Fn getopt_long_clip will print an error message to .Sy stderr when an error or invalid option is encountered. .Sh RETURN VALUES If the .Fa flag field in .Vt "struct option" is .Dv NULL , .Fn getopt_long and .Fn getopt_long_only return the value specified in the .Fa val field, which is usually just the corresponding short option. If .Fa flag is not .Dv NULL , these functions return 0 and store .Fa val in the location pointed to by .Fa flag . These functions return .Ql \&: if there was a missing option argument, .Ql \&? if the user specified an unknown or ambiguous option, and \-1 when the argument list has been exhausted. .Pp If a long option to .Fn getopt_long_clip is missing its equivalent short option (or vice-versa),\-1 is returned on the first call to .Fn getopt_long_clip , and .Dv errno is set to .Er EINVAL . If .Va opterr is set to a non-zero value and .Fa optstring does not start with .Ql \&: , an error message will be written to .Sy stderr . .Pp If .Fa optstring does not start with .Ql \&: and .Fn getopt_long , .Fn getopt_long_only , or .Fn getopt_long_clip return .Ql \&: or .Ql \&? , if .Va opterr is set to a non-zero value, an error message is written to .Dv stderr . .Sh ENVIRONMENT The following environment variables can effect the execution of .Nm getopt_long , .Nm getopt_long_only , and .Nm getopt_long_clip : .Ev LANG , .Ev LC_ALL , .Ev LC_MESSAGES . See .Xr environ 7 . .Bl -tag -width ".Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT" .It Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT If set, option processing stops when the first non-option is found and a leading .Ql - or .Ql + in the .Fa optstring is ignored. .El .Sh USAGE Similar to .Xr getopt 3C , since there is no unambiguous way to detect a missing option-argument except when the option is the last option on the command line, the .Fn getopt_long , .Fn getopt_long_only , and .Fn getopt_long_clip functions cannot fully check for mandatory arguments. For example, the option string .Ql ho\&: with an input of .Ql Fl o Fl h will assume that .Ql Fl h is the required argument to .Fl o instead of assuming that .Fl o is missing its option-argument. .Pp Like .Xr getopt 3C , grouping options taking or requiring arguments with other options is a violation of the Basic Utility Command syntax standard (see .Xr Intro 1 ) . For example, given the option string .Ql cde\&: , running: .Pp .Dl cmd Fl cde Ar ieio .Pp is incorrect. Current versions of .Nm getopt_long , .Nm getopt_long_only , and .Nm getopt_long_clip accept this, however future versions may not support this. The correct invocation would be: .Pp .Dl cmd Fl cd Fl e Ar ieio .Sh EXAMPLES .Sy Example 1 Basic usage of .Fn getopt_long . .Pp In this example, the short options, .Fl b and .Fl f are treated the same way as their corresponding long options .Fl -buffy and .Fl -fluoride . The long option .Fl -daggerset is only matched as a long option. .Pp .Bd -literal -compact int bflag, ch, fd; int daggerset; /* options descriptor */ static struct option longopts[] = { { "buffy", no_argument, NULL, 'b' }, { "fluoride", required_argument, NULL, 'f' }, { "daggerset", no_argument, \*[Am]daggerset, 1 }, { NULL, 0, NULL, 0 } }; bflag = 0; while ((ch = getopt_long(argc, argv, "bf:", longopts, NULL)) != -1) { switch (ch) { case 'b': bflag = 1; break; case 'f': if ((fd = open(optarg, O_RDONLY, 0)) == -1) err(1, "unable to open %s", optarg); break; case 0: if (daggerset) { fprintf(stderr,"Buffy will use her dagger to " "apply fluoride to dracula's teeth\en"); } break; default: usage(); } } argc -= optind; argv += optind; .Ed .Pp .Sy Example 2 Mixing short-only and long-only options. .Pp This example has a program that uses both short and long options and always causes the option to be handled in a way that is similar to .Xr getopt 3C regardless of if it is short or long. Options that are only long options are assigned a character value that is outside of the common 8-bit range .Po starting at .Dv USHRT_MAX + 1. .Pc This allows them to still integrate into a normal .Xr getopt 3C style option processing loop. .Pp In the following code, .Fl s is only usable as a short option while .Fl -long-only is only usable as a long option, hence .Fl s is only specified in .Fa optstring and .Fl -long-only is only specified in the .Fa longopts .Vt option array. .Pp .Bd -literal -compact #include #include #include enum longopt_chars { LONG_ONLY = USHRT_MAX +1 }; static struct option longopts[] = { { "all", no_argument, NULL, 'a' }, { "list", no_argument, NULL, 'l' }, { "long-only", no_argument, NULL, LONG_ONLY }, { "output", required_argument, NULL, 'o' }, { NULL } }; int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int ch; while ((ch = getopt_long(argc, argv, "alo:s", longopts, NULL)) != -1) { switch (ch) { case 'a': printf("found -a\en"); break; case 'l': printf("found -l\en"); break; case 'o': printf("found -o: %s\en", optarg); break; case 's': printf("found -s\en"); break; case LONG_ONLY: printf("found --long-only\en"); break; default: break; } } return (0); } .Ed .Sh ERRORS The .Fn getopt_long_clip function will fail if: .Bl -tag -width EINVAL .It Er EINVAL A short option is missing a corresponding long option, or vice-versa. .El .Pp There are no errors defined for .Fn getopt_long and .Fn getopt_long_only . .Sh IMPLEMENTATION DIFFERENCES While the illumos implementations of .Nm getopt_long and .Nm getopt_long_only are broadly compatible with other implementations, the following edge cases have historically been known to vary among implementations: .Bl -bullet .It The setting of .Va optopt for long options with .Fa flag != .Dv NULL in .Vt struct option . In illumos, .Va optopt is set to 0 (since .Fa val would never be returned). .It The setting of .Va optarg for long options without an argument that are invoked via .Ql -W .Ql ( W\&; in .Fa optstring ) . illumos sets .Va optarg to the option name (the argument of .Ql -W ) . .It The handling of .Ql -W with an argument that is not (a prefix to) a known long option .Ql ( W\&; in .Fa optstring ) . illumos treats this as an error (unknown option) and returns .Ql \&? with .Va optopt set to 0 and .Va optarg set to .Dv NULL . .It illumos may not permute the argument vector at the same points in the calling sequence as other implementations. The aspects normally used by the caller (ordering after \-1 is returned, the value of .Va optind relative to current positions) are the same, though. (We often do fewer variable swaps.) .El .Sh INTERFACE STABILITY Committed .Sh MT-LEVEL Unsafe .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr getopt 3C .Sh BUGS The .Fa argv argument is not really .Vt const as its elements may be permuted (unless .Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT is set).