Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!ginosko!aplcen!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: getopt question
Keywords: getopt
Message-ID: <11289@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 14 Oct 89 05:44:52 GMT
References: <948@asuvax.asu.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 9

In article <948@asuvax.asu.edu> system@asuvax.asu.edu (Marc Lesure) writes:
>The man page of 'getopt' shows that a ':' is used to indicate that the
>option has an argument following it.  My question is, does a version
>of 'getopt' exist that allows an option to have an optional argument that
>may or may not follow it.

Since getopt() (and the shell built-in "getopts") is supposed to implement
the UNIX Command Syntax Standard, of which the behavior you describe is a
clear violation, one hopes not.