Command line parsing in shell script

Question

I have a shell script where i am parsing command line argument. My arguments has path in it. Example: mycript.sh -c test -s global -n /mydir/test1 -d /orgdir/test35 When I run the script and echo the arguments which contains path(special char "/"), it gives me empty path.

#/!bin/bash
...

while getopts c:hs:n:d opt
do
case "$opt" in
c) INST=$OPTARG;;
d) INST_DIR=$OPTARG;;
h) usage;;
s) METHOD=$OPTARG;;
n) MAINTENANCE_DIR=$OPTARG;;
\?) usage;;
esac
done

echo INST dir is [$INST_DIR]
echo MAINTENANCE dir is [$MAINTENANCE_DIR]
.......

Result of this echo is

INST dir is []
MAINTENANCE dir is []

Can someone tell what is incorrect here?

it's not a direct solution to your problem, but I'd advice you to have a look at docopt which is a portable (across languages) way to parse arguments. — zmo
– zmo, Commented Feb 26, 2014 at 11:04
docopt is still a 3rd-party solution, though. getopts is part of bash, and so is completely portable (given the assumption that bash is available, anyway). — chepner
– chepner, Commented Feb 26, 2014 at 14:26

Bentoy13 · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-26 11:04:28Z

2

With your script, I have a different result:

INST dir is []
MAINTENANCE dir is [/mydir/test1]

I have changed line 4 of your script like this:

while getopts c:h:s:n:d: opt

It works fine for me under Cygwin, with bash version 4.1.10(4)-release.

answered Feb 26, 2014 at 11:04

Bentoy13

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1 Comment

chepner Over a year ago

+1 Same here. The only apparent problem in the original is the missing : after d in the option list.

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