bash getopts multiple arguments or default value

Greg picture Greg · Feb 27, 2014 · Viewed 10.3k times · Source

So I have a question about get opts in bash. I want to get the value of the arguments if they are present but if they are not present to use a default value. So the script should take a directory and an integer but if they aren't specified then $PWD and 3 should be default values. Here is what

while getopts "hd:l:" opt; do
    case $opt in
        d ) directory=$OPTARG;;
        l ) depth=$OPTARG;;
        h ) usage
        exit 0;;
        \? ) usage
        exit 1;;
    esac

Answer

anubhava picture anubhava · Feb 27, 2014

You can just provide default value before while loop:

directory=mydir
depth=123
while getopts "hd:l:" opt; do
    case $opt in
        d ) directory=$OPTARG;;
        l ) depth=$OPTARG;;
        h ) usage
        exit 0;;
        *) usage
        exit 1;;
    esac
done
echo "<$directory> <$depth>"