Is Mixing Getopts with Positional Parameters Possible?

Chloe Bennett
Chloe Bennett
• • 11 min read

I Want to Design a Shell Script as a Wrapper for a Couple of Scripts. I Would Like to Specify Parameters for Myshell. Sh Using Getopts and Pass the Remaining...

Is Mixing Getopts with Positional Parameters Possible?

I want to design a shell script as a wrapper for a couple of scripts. I would like to specify parameters for myshell.sh using getopts and pass the remaining parameters in the same order to the script specified.

If myshell.sh is executed like:

myshell.sh -h hostname -s test.sh -d waittime param1 param2 param3

myshell.sh param1 param2 -h hostname param3 -d waittime -s test.sh

myshell.sh param1 -h hostname -d waittime -s test.sh param2 param3

All of the above should be able to call as

test.sh param1 param2 param3

Is it possible to utilize the options parameters in the myshell.sh and post remaining parameters to underlying script?

3

9 Answers

I wanted to do something similar to the OP, and I found the relevant information I required here and here

Essentially if you want to do something like:

script.sh [options] ARG1 ARG2

Then get your options like this:

while getopts "h:u:p:d:" flag; do
case "$flag" in
    h) HOSTNAME=$OPTARG;;
    u) USERNAME=$OPTARG;;
    p) PASSWORD=$OPTARG;;
    d) DATABASE=$OPTARG;;
esac
done

And then you can get your positional arguments like this:

ARG1=${@:$OPTIND:1}
ARG2=${@:$OPTIND+1:1}

More information and details are available through the link above.

Hope that helps!!

5

Mix opts and args : 

ARGS=""
echo "options :"
while [ $# -gt 0 ]
do
    unset OPTIND
    unset OPTARG
    while getopts as:c:  options
    do
    case $options in
            a)  echo "option a  no optarg"
                    ;;
            s)  serveur="$OPTARG"
                    echo "option s = $serveur"
                    ;;
            c)  cible="$OPTARG"
                    echo "option c = $cible"
                    ;;
        esac
   done
   shift $((OPTIND-1))
   ARGS="${ARGS} $1 "
   shift
done

echo "ARGS : $ARGS"
exit 1

Result:

bash test.sh  -a  arg1 arg2 -s serveur -c cible  arg3
options :
option a  no optarg
option s = serveur
option c = cible
ARGS :  arg1  arg2  arg3
3

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myshell.sh:

#!/bin/bash

script_args=()
while [ $OPTIND -le "$#" ]
do
    if getopts h:d:s: option
    then
        case $option
        in
            h) host_name="$OPTARG";;
            d) wait_time="$OPTARG";;
            s) script="$OPTARG";;
        esac
    else
        script_args+=("${!OPTIND}")
        ((OPTIND++))
    fi
done

"$script" "${script_args[@]}"
Chloe Bennett

Chloe Bennett

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