Is mixing getopts with positional parameters possible?

Bharat Sinha picture Bharat Sinha · Jul 31, 2012 · Viewed 33.1k times · Source

I want to design a shell script as a wrapper for a couple of scripts. I would like to specify parameters for myshell.sh using getopts and pass the remaining parameters in the same order to the script specified.

If myshell.sh is executed like:

myshell.sh -h hostname -s test.sh -d waittime param1 param2 param3

myshell.sh param1 param2 -h hostname param3 -d waittime -s test.sh

myshell.sh param1 -h hostname -d waittime -s test.sh param2 param3

All of the above should be able to call as

test.sh param1 param2 param3

Is it possible to utilize the options parameters in the myshell.sh and post remaining parameters to underlying script?

Answer

DRendar picture DRendar · Nov 15, 2012

I wanted to do something similar to the OP, and I found the relevant information I required here and here

Essentially if you want to do something like:

script.sh [options] ARG1 ARG2

Then get your options like this:

while getopts "h:u:p:d:" flag; do
case "$flag" in
    h) HOSTNAME=$OPTARG;;
    u) USERNAME=$OPTARG;;
    p) PASSWORD=$OPTARG;;
    d) DATABASE=$OPTARG;;
esac
done

And then you can get your positional arguments like this:

ARG1=${@:$OPTIND:1}
ARG2=${@:$OPTIND+1:1}

More information and details are available through the link above.

Hope that helps!!