Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 15:24:44 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: ash missing 'getopts' builtin (gold star alert)
Message-ID: <20030519192444.GB24066@redhat.com>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
References: <20030519081134 DOT B19452 AT ns DOT helixdigital DOT com> <20030519152016 DOT GA29656 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de> <20030519085741 DOT C19452 AT ns DOT helixdigital DOT com> <20030519164628 DOT GL19367 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de> <20030519113141 DOT A11077 AT ns DOT helixdigital DOT com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <20030519113141.A11077@ns.helixdigital.com>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i

On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 11:31:41AM -0700, Dario Alcocer wrote:
>On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 06:46:28PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 08:57:41AM -0700, Dario Alcocer wrote:
>> > In fact, I'd say that getopts is almost necessary for scripting,
>> > because its inclusion allows scripts to be on an equal footing with
>> > compiled programs, in that both can accept command line options. This
>> > means I can write small programs as shell scripts instead of as a
>> > compiled program; this is entirely consistent with traditional Unix
>> > programming philosophy, which encourages the use of shell scripts for
>> > small programs.
>> 
>> There is that problem left that getopts isn't quite "plain old sh".
>> It's a System V extension while earlier version only had getopt
>> (which is available as external command).
>
>Excellent point. Upon further reflection, I see that my so-called Bourne
>shell 'compatible' scripts aren't really. I should be using the external
>getopt with the 'set -- `getopt`' idiom instead. I didn't realize I was
>relying on a non-standard feature.
>
>Thanks for your time. I ended up learning something new about shell
>programming.

Wow.  Thanks for the reasonable response.  This issue has cropped up
from time to time here and it always seems to revert to rancor.  I
actually opened this message with some trepidation expecting some kind
of "Well, it seems to me..." type of response.  Instead, this time we
had a nice reasonable discussion.  Maybe that's because I didn't get
involved until now.  :-)

Anyway, in my usual arbitrary fashion, I think this deserves a gold star.

I hope our intrepid gold star recorder is reading this.

cgf

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/