Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:19561 comp.unix.questions:18104
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Question about GETOPT(3)
Message-ID: <7179@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 1 Dec 89 16:45:02 GMT
References: <7043@ficc.uu.net> <110@amix.commodore.com> <7077@ficc.uu.net> <118@amix.commodore.com> <1143@cirrusl.UUCP>
Reply-To: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 35

In article <1143@cirrusl.UUCP> dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
> The existence of getopt allows C programs to accept arguments in a
> consistent way across many OSes, not just UNIX.

Unfortunately, it means that C programs are *inconsistent* with the command
line interface of most operating systems. In the latest UNIX Review, Eric
Allman describes a better way. It's called "parseargs", and uses a table
to describe the command line arguments. This permits the use of multi-
character arguments in operating systems where this is the standard, and
generates usage and error messages directly.

If a program (let's call it foo) uses it, then it could be called as:

foo -[abcdef] foofile [file]...
foo /{add,block,create,delete,edit,find} foofile [file[,file]...]
foo /[abcdef] foofile [file]...
foo foofile {add,block,create,delete,edit,find} [file]...
foo foofile/{AD,BL,CR,DL,ED,FD}[=file[,file]...]

Depending on the operating system it's running under.

Not only that, but it's easier to use than getopt:

main(ac, av)
int ac;
char **av;
{
	parseargs(argument_descriptor_table, av);
	...
}
-- 
`-_-' Peter da Silva <peter@ficc.uu.net> <peter@sugar.lonestar.org>.
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