Question

I have a bash script like this :

usage="setup.sh [-localsource path to dir] [-help]";

 for i in $@
    do
        if [ "$localSourceOpt" = 1 ]
        then
            localSource=$i
            localSourceOpt=0;
        fi
        if [ "$i" = "-localsource" ]
        then
            localSourceOpt=1;
        fi
        if [ "$i" = "-help" ]
        then
            echo "$usage";
            exit;
        fi
    done

which requires on argument e.g

setup.sh -localsource PATH 

what I need is to add another argument which MIGHT have multiple argument values e.g

 setup.sh -localsource PATH  -locbranches one two three 

What I should do to capture values passed for argument “-locbranches”

thanks in advance

Answer 1

I note that you’re having to code a lot of logic to handle the simplest command-line argument mechanism, and I’d perhaps suggest using the bash getopts functionality instead.

This makes the single argument option work trivial. For multiple arguments it doesn’t work well, and you would have to quote the args e.g. -option "1 2 3". However it does handle multiple arguments in the following scenario.

setup.sh -localsource PATH one two three 

i.e. the one two three aren’t linked to any command line option. An alternative is to specify the option for each argument e.g.

setup.sh -localsource PATH -locbranch one -locbranch two -locbranch three