Using getopts to process long and short command line options

Question

I wish to have long and short forms of command line options invoked using my shell script.

I know that getopts can be used, but like in Perl, I have not

Answer 1

The Bash builtin getopts function can be used to parse long options by putting a dash character followed by a colon into the optspec:

#!/usr/bin/env bash 
optspec=":hv-:"
while getopts "$optspec" optchar; do
    case "${optchar}" in
        -)
            case "${OPTARG}" in
                loglevel)
                    val="${!OPTIND}"; OPTIND=$(( $OPTIND + 1 ))
                    echo "Parsing option: '--${OPTARG}', value: '${val}'" >&2;
                    ;;
                loglevel=*)
                    val=${OPTARG#*=}
                    opt=${OPTARG%=$val}
                    echo "Parsing option: '--${opt}', value: '${val}'" >&2
                    ;;
                *)
                    if [ "$OPTERR" = 1 ] && [ "${optspec:0:1}" != ":" ]; then
                        echo "Unknown option --${OPTARG}" >&2
                    fi
                    ;;
            esac;;
        h)
            echo "usage: $0 [-v] [--loglevel[=]]" >&2
            exit 2
            ;;
        v)
            echo "Parsing option: '-${optchar}'" >&2
            ;;
        *)
            if [ "$OPTERR" != 1 ] || [ "${optspec:0:1}" = ":" ]; then
                echo "Non-option argument: '-${OPTARG}'" >&2
            fi
            ;;
    esac
done

After copying to executable file name=getopts_test.sh in the current working directory, one can produce output like

$ ./getopts_test.sh
$ ./getopts_test.sh -f
Non-option argument: '-f'
$ ./getopts_test.sh -h
usage: code/getopts_test.sh [-v] [--loglevel[=]]
$ ./getopts_test.sh --help
$ ./getopts_test.sh -v
Parsing option: '-v'
$ ./getopts_test.sh --very-bad
$ ./getopts_test.sh --loglevel
Parsing option: '--loglevel', value: ''
$ ./getopts_test.sh --loglevel 11
Parsing option: '--loglevel', value: '11'
$ ./getopts_test.sh --loglevel=11
Parsing option: '--loglevel', value: '11'

Obviously getopts neither performs OPTERR checking nor option-argument parsing for the long options. The script fragment above shows how this may be done manually. The basic principle also works in the Debian Almquist shell ("dash"). Note the special case:

getopts -- "-:"  ## without the option terminator "-- " bash complains about "-:"
getopts "-:"     ## this works in the Debian Almquist shell ("dash")

Note that, as GreyCat from over at http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ points out, this trick exploits a non-standard behaviour of the shell which permits the option-argument (i.e. the filename in "-f filename") to be concatenated to the option (as in "-ffilename"). The POSIX standard says there must be a space between them, which in the case of "-- longoption" would terminate the option-parsing and turn all longoptions into non-option arguments.