Question about ash and getopts

Blair P. Houghton blair@houghton.net
Mon Dec 29 19:21:00 GMT 2003


Peter Seebach wrote:
>In message <3FEFDE5B.3000801@helixdigital.com>, Dario Alcocer writes:
>>Use the "set -- `getopt`" idiom instead:
>Yes, but *why*?

==============
% cygcheck --version
cygcheck version 1.30
System Checker for Cygwin
Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Red Hat, Inc.
Compiled on Feb  8 2003
% cat > bt.sh
#!/bin/sh

set -- `getopt`

echo $0 $2 $4
echo $1 $3 $5
^D
% bt.sh 1 2 3 4 5 6
getopt: missing optstring argument
Try `getopt --help' for more information.
./bt.sh
===============

Hey.  It got $0 right.

So I take it this "idiom" is only supposed to work in newer cygwin versions?

And I too am puzzled why someone would defeature a shell instead of letting it work with either
method.  I don't see it as a portability issue unless you think a significant number of users will
be porting their scripts from systems running cygwin to systems running atavistic variants of UNIX.

--Blair


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/



More information about the Cygwin mailing list