Makefile for manual page installation. Subtle and complicated.

[mLib] / man / mdwopt.3

.\" -*-nroff-*-
.TH mdwopt 3 "6 July 1999" mLib
.SH "NAME"
mdwopt \- command-line option parser
.\" @mdwopt
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.nf
.B "#include <mLib/mdwopt.h>"

.BI "int mdwopt(int " argc ", char *const *" argv ,
.BI "           const char *" shortopt ,
.BI "           const struct option *" longopt ", int *" longind ,
.BI "           mdwopt_data *" data ", int " flags );

.BI "int getopt(int " argc ", char *const *" argv ", const char *" o );

.BI "int getopt_long(int " argc ", char *const *" argv ,
.BI "                const char * "shortopt ,
.BI "                const struct option *" longopt ", int *" longind );

.BI "int getopt_long_only(int " argc ", char *const *" argv ,
.BI "                    const char * "shortopt ,
.BI "                    const struct option *" longopt ", int *" longind );
.fi
.SH "OVERVIEW"
The
.B mdwopt
function is a command line options parser which is (mostly) compatible
with the standard POSIX and GNU
.B getopt
functions, although provides more features than either.  It's not the
most featureful options parser around, but it's good enough for my
purposes at the moment.
.SH "OPTION SYNTAX"
A command line consists of a number of
.I words
(which may contain spaces, according to various shell quoting
conventions).  A word may be an option, an argument to an option, or a
non-option.  An option begins with a special character, usually
.RB ` \- ',
although
.RB ` + '
is also used sometimes.  As special exceptions, the word containing only
a
.RB ` \- '
is considered to be a non-option, since it usually represents standard
input or output as a filename, and the word containing only a
double-dash
.RB ` \-\-'
is used to mark all following words as being non-options regardless of
their initial character.
.PP
Traditionally, all words after the first non-option have been considered
to be non-options automatically, so that options must be specified
before filenames.  However, this implementation can extract all the
options from the command line regardless of their position.  This can
usually be disabled by setting one of the environment variables
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
or
.BR _POSIX_OPTION_ORDER .
.PP
There are two different styles of options:
.I short
and
.IR long .
Traditional Unix (and POSIX) only uses short options.  The long options
are a GNU convention.
.SS "Short option syntax"
Short options are the sort which Unix has known for ages: an option is a
single letter, preceded by a
.RB ` \-| '.
Short options can be joined together to save space (and possibly to make
silly words): e.g., instead of giving options
.RB ` "\-x \-y" ',
a user could write
.RB ` \-xy '.
Some short options can have arguments which appear after the option
letter, either immediately following, or in the next word; so an option
with an argument could be written as
.RB ` "\-o foo" '
or as
.RB ` \-ofoo ').
Note that options with optional arguments must be written in the second
style.
.PP
When a short option controls a flag setting, it is sometimes possible to
explicitly turn the flag off, as well as turning it on, (usually to
override default options).  This is usually done by using a
.RB ` + '
instead of a 
.RB ` \- '
to introduce the option.  (Some programs use upper-case option letters
to indicate this instead.)
.SS "Long option syntax"
Long options, as popularized by the GNU utilities, are given long-ish
memorable names, preceded by a double-dash
.RB ` \-\- '.
Since their names are more than a single character, long options can't
be combined in the same way as short options.  Arguments to long options
may be given either in the same word, separated from the option name by
an equals sign, or in the following word.
.PP
Long option names can be abbreviated if necessary, as long as the
abbreviation is unique.  This means that options can have sensible and
memorable names but still not require much typing from an experienced
user.
.PP
Like short options, long options can control flag settings.  The options
to manipulate these settings come in pairs: an option of the form
.RB ` \-\-set\-flag '
might set the flag, while an option of the form
.RB ` \-\-no\-set\-flag '
might clear it.
.PP
It is usual for applications to provide both short and long options with
identical behaviour.  Some applications with lots of options may only
provide long options (although they will often be only two or three
characters long).  In this case, long options can be preceded with a
single
.RB ` \- '
character, and negated by a
.RB ` + '
character.
.SS "Numerical options"
Finally, some (older) programs accept arguments of the form
.RB ` \- \c
.IR number ',
to set some numerical parameter, typically a line count of some kind.
.SH "PARSING OPTIONS WITH \fBmdwopt\fP"
An application parses its options by calling
.B mdwopt
repeatedly.  Each time it is called,
.B mdwopt
returns a value describing the option just read, and stores information
about the option in a data block.
.PP
The data block is a structure containing at least the following members:
.TP
.B arg
Pointer to the argument of the current option, or null.  Argument
strings persist for as long as the underlying command line argument
array
.I argv
does, so it's usually safe just to remember the pointer.
.TP
.B opt
Value of the current option
.TP
.B int
Must be initialized to 0 before the first call to
.BR mdwopt .
After the last call, it is the index into
.I argv
of the first nonoption argument.
.TP
.B err
Set to nonzero to allow
.B mdwopt
to emit error messages about illegal option syntax.  (This would be a
flag setting, but it has to be here for
.B getopt
compatibility.)
.TP
.B prog
Contains the program's name, stripped of any path prefix.  This is an
obsolete feature: the
.BR quis (3)
module does the job in a more sensible way.
.PP
Prior to the first call to
.BR mdwopt ,
the
.B err
and
.B ind
members of the structure must be initialized
.PP
The arguments
.I argc
and
.I argv
describe the command-line argument array which is to be parsed.  These
will usually be exactly the arguments passed to the program's
.B main
function.
.SS "Short option parsing"
Short options are described by a string,
.IR shortopt ,
which once upon a time just contained the permitted option characters.
Now the options string begins with a collection of flag characters, and
various flag characters can be put after options characters to change
their properties.
.PP
If the first character of the short options string is
.RB ` + ',
.RB ` \- '
or
.RB ` ! ',
the order in which options are read is modified, as follows:
.TP
.RB ` + '
Forces the POSIX order to be used. As soon as a non-option is found,
.B mdwopt
returns \-1.
.TP
.RB ` \- '
Makes
.B mdwopt
treat non-options as being `special' sorts of option. When a non-option
word is found, the value 0 is returned, and the actual text of the word
is stored as being the option's argument.
.TP
.RB ` ! '
forces the default order to be used regardless of environment variable
settings.  The entire command line is scanned for options, which are
returned in order.  However, during this process, the options are moved
in the
.I argv
array, so that they appear before the non-options.
.PP
A
.RB ` : '
character may be placed after the ordering flag (or at the very
beginning if no ordering flag is given) which indicates that the
character
.RB ` : ',
rather than
.RB ` ? ',
should be returned if a missing argument error is detected.
.PP
Each option in the string can be followed by a
.RB ` + '
sign, indicating that it can be negated, a
.RB ` : '
sign indicating that it requires an argument, or a
.RB ` :: '
string, indicating an optional argument.  Both
.RB ` + '
and one of
.RB ` : '
or
.RB ` :: '
may be given, although the
.RB ` + '
must come first.
.PP
If an option is found, the option character is returned to the caller.
A pointer to an argument is stored in the
.B arg
member of the data block; a null pointer is stored if there was no
argument.  If a negated option was found, the option character is
returned ORred with
.B OPTF_NEGATED
(bit 8 set).
.SS "Long option parsing"
Long options are described in a table.  Each entry in the
table is of type
.BR "struct option" ,
which contains the following members (in order):
.TP
.B name
Pointer to the option's name.
.TP
.B has_arg
A flags word describing the option.  (The name is historical.)
.TP
.B flag
Address of the flag variable to use when this option is matched.
.TP
.B val
Value to store or return when this option is matched.
.PP
The table is terminated by an entry whose
.B name
field is a null pointer.
.PP
When
.B mdwopt
finds a long option, it looks the name up in the table. The index of the
matching entry is stored in the
.I longind
variable, passed to
.B mdwopt
(unless 
.I longind
is null): a value of \-1 indicates that no long option was found. The
behaviour is then dependent on the values in the table entry.
.PP
If the flag bit
.B OPTF_ARGREQ
is set in
.B has_arg
then the option has a required argument, which may be separated from the
option name by an equals sign or placed in the following word.  If the
flag bit
.B OPTF_ARGOPT
is set then the argument is optional.  If present, the argument must be
in the same word as the option name, separated by an equals sign.  It is
an error for both flags to be set; if neither is set then the option
does not take an argument.
.PP
If
.B flag
is nonzero, it points to an integer to be modified by
.BR mdwopt .
Usually the value in the
.B val
field is simply stored in the
.B flag
variable. If the flag
.B OPTF_SWITCH
is set in the
.B has_arg
member, however, the value is combined with the existing value of the
flags using a bitwise OR.  If
.B OPTF_NEGATE
is set in the
.B has_arg
field, then the flag bit will be cleared if a matching negated long
option is found.  The value 0 is returned.
.PP
If
.B flag
is zero, the value in
.B val
is returned by
.BR mdwopt ,
possibly with bit 8 set if the option was
negated.
.PP
Arguments for long options are stored in the
.B arg
.SS "Other optional features"
The
.I flags
argument contains a bitmask of features which may be enabled:
.TP
.B OPTF_NOLONGS
Don't allow any long options.  This makes
.B mdwopt
compatible with traditional Unix
.BR getopt .
.TP
.B OPTF_NOSHORTS
A slightly misnamed flag.  Short options are read normally.  However,
long options may also begin with a single dash
.RB ` \- '
(or the
.RB ` + '
sign if negated).  Long options may not be combined with short options:
an option word which begins with a short option must contain only short
options.
.TP
.B OPTF_NUMBERS
Read numeric options.  If a numeric option is found, the character
.RB ` # '
is returned and the text of the number is stored in the
.B arg
member of the data block.
.TP
.B OPTF_NEGATION
Allow negation of options.  Negated options are returned ORed with
.BR OPTF_NEGATED .
.TP
.B OPTF_ENVVAR
Options will be read from an environment variable before scanning the
actual command line provided.  The name of the environment variable is
found by capitalizing the program name.  (This allows a user to have
different default settings for a program, by calling it through
different symbolic links.)
.TP
.B OPTF_NOPROGNAME
Don't read the program name from
.IR argv \c
.BR [0] ,
and don't set the
.B prog
data block member.  Options start right at the beginning of
.IR argv .
.TP
.B OPTF_NEGNUMBER
Allow negated numeric options.  Negated numeric options begin with a
.RB ` + '
rather than a
.RB ` \- '.
The return value is
.RB ` # ' " | OPTF_NEGATED" .
.SS "Compatibility features"
The macros
.BR getopt ,
.B getopt_long
and
.B getopt_long_only
correspond to calls to
.B mdwopt
with various flag settings.  See the macro definitions for the actual
mappings, and the documentation for the functions to see how they're
meant to work.
.PP
Additionally, there is a global data block, which is specified by
passing a null
.I data
argument to
.BR mdwopt .
The members of this block may be referred to by their traditional names:
.TP
.B optarg
The argument of the current option.
.TP
.B optopt
Option code of the current option.
.TP
.B opterr
Nonzero if
.B mdwopt
is to report errors.  This is the default.
.TP
.B optind
Index of the first non-option argument.
.TP
.B optprog
Name of the program, stripped of path prefix.
.PP
These names aren't considered deprecated: they help make the code easier
to read by people used to the traditional
.B getopt
function.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR getopt (3),
.BR mLib (3).
.SH "AUTHOR"
Mark Wooding, <mdw@nsict.org>