Bash Shell Script - Check for a flag and grab its value

Question

I am trying to make a shell script which is designed to be run like this:

script.sh -t application

Firstly, in my script I want to check to see

Answer 1

Try shFlags -- Advanced command-line flag library for Unix shell scripts.

http://code.google.com/p/shflags/

It is very good and very flexible.

FLAG TYPES: This is a list of the DEFINE_*'s that you can do. All flags take a name, default value, help-string, and optional 'short' name (one-letter name). Some flags have other arguments, which are described with the flag.

DEFINE_string: takes any input, and intreprets it as a string.

DEFINE_boolean: typically does not take any argument: say --myflag to set FLAGS_myflag to true, or --nomyflag to set FLAGS_myflag to false. Alternately, you can say --myflag=true or --myflag=t or --myflag=0 or --myflag=false or --myflag=f or --myflag=1 Passing an option has the same affect as passing the option once.

DEFINE_float: takes an input and intreprets it as a floating point number. As shell does not support floats per-se, the input is merely validated as being a valid floating point value.

DEFINE_integer: takes an input and intreprets it as an integer.

SPECIAL FLAGS: There are a few flags that have special meaning: --help (or -?) prints a list of all the flags in a human-readable fashion --flagfile=foo read flags from foo. (not implemented yet) -- as in getopt(), terminates flag-processing

EXAMPLE USAGE:

-- begin hello.sh --
 ! /bin/sh
. ./shflags
DEFINE_string name 'world' "somebody's name" n
FLAGS "$@" || exit $?
eval set -- "${FLAGS_ARGV}"
echo "Hello, ${FLAGS_name}."
-- end hello.sh --

$ ./hello.sh -n Kate
Hello, Kate.

Note: I took this text from shflags documentation