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7. Automated Option Processing

AutoOpts 35.0 is bundled with AutoGen. It is a tool that virtually eliminates the hassle of processing options and keeping man pages, info docs and usage text up to date. This package allows you to specify several program attributes, up to a hundred option types and many option attributes. From this, it then produces all the code necessary to parse and handle the command line and configuration file options, and the documentation that should go with your program as well.

All the features notwithstanding, some applications simply have well-established command line interfaces. Even still, those programs may use the configuration file parsing portion of the library. See the “AutoOpts Features” and “Configuration File Format” sections.


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7.1 AutoOpts Features

AutoOpts supports option processing; option state saving; and program documentation with innumerable features. Here, we list a few obvious ones and some important ones, but the full list is really defined by all the attributes defined in the Option Definitions section.

  1. POSIX-compliant short (flag) option processing.
  2. GNU-style long options processing. Long options are recognized without case sensitivity, and they may be abbreviated.
  3. Environment variable initializations, See section environment variable presets.
  4. Initialization from configuration files (aka RC or INI files), and saving the option state back into one, See section configuration file presets.
  5. Config files may be partitioned. One config file may be used by several programs by partitioning it with lines containing, “[PROGRAM_NAME]” or “<?program-name>”, See section configuration file presets.
  6. Config files may contain AutoOpts directives. “<?auto-options [[option-text]]>” may be used to set AutoOpts option processing options. Viz., GNU usage layout versus AutoOpts conventional layout, and misuse-usage versus no-misuse-usage, See section Usage and Version Info Display.
  7. Options may be marked as dis-abled with a disablement prefix. Such options may default to either an enabled or a disabled state. You may also provide an enablement prefix, too, e.g., --allow-mumble and --prevent-mumble (see section Common Option Attributes).
  8. Verify that required options are present between the minimum and maximum number of times on the command line. Verify that conflicting options do not appear together. Verify that options requiring the presence of other options are, in fact, used in the presence of other options. See See section Common Option Attributes, and See section Option Conflict Attributes.
  9. There are several automatically supported options. They will have short flags if any options have option flags and the flags are not suppressed. The associated flag may be altered or suppressed by specifying no value or an alternate character for “xxx-value;” in the option definition file. “xxx” is the name of the option below:
    --help
    --more-help

    These are always available. “more-help” will pass the full usage text through a pager.

    --usage

    This is added to the option list if “usage-opt” is specified. It yields the abbreviated usage to ‘stdout’.

    --version

    This is added to the option list if “version = xxx;” is specified.

    --load-opts
    --save-opts

    These are added to the option list if “homerc” is specified.

  10. Various forms of main procedures can be added to the output, See section Generating main procedures. There are four basic forms:
    1. A program that processes the arguments and writes to standard out portable shell commands containing the digested options.
    2. A program that will generate portable shell commands to parse the defined options. The expectation is that this result will be copied into a shell script and used there.
    3. A “for-each” main that will invoke a named function once for either each non-option argument on the command line or, if there are none, then once for each non-blank, non-comment input line read from stdin.
    4. A main procedure of your own design. Its code can be supplied in the option description template or by incorporating another template.
  11. There are several methods for handling option arguments.
  12. The generated usage text can be emitted in either AutoOpts standard format (maximizing the information about each option), or GNU-ish normal form. The default form is selected by either specifying or not specifying the gnu-usage attribute (see section Program Information Attributes). This can be overridden by the user himself with the AUTOOPTS_USAGE environment variable. If it exists and is set to the string gnu, it will force GNU-ish style format; if it is set to the string autoopts, it will force AutoOpts standard format; otherwise, it will have no effect.
  13. If you compile with ENABLE_NLS defined and _() defined to a localization function such as gettext(3GNU), then the option processing code will be localizable (see section Internationalizing AutoOpts).
  14. Provides a callable routine to parse a text string as if it were from one of the rc/ini/config files, hereafter referred to as a configuration file.
  15. By adding a ‘doc’ and ‘arg-name’ attributes to each option, AutoGen will also be able to produce a man page and the ‘invoking’ section of a texinfo document.
  16. Intermingled option processing. AutoOpts options may be intermingled with command line operands and options processed with other parsing techniques. This is accomplished by setting the allow-errors (see section Program Description Attributes) attribute. When processing reaches a point where optionProcess (see section optionProcess) needs to be called again, the current option can be set with RESTART_OPT(n) (see section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing) before calling optionProcess.

    See: See section Options for Library Code.

  17. Library suppliers can specify command line options that their client programs will accept. They specify option definitions that get #include-d into the client option definitions and they specify an "anchor" option that has a callback and must be invoked. That will give the library access to the option state for their options.
  18. library options. An AutoOpt-ed library may export its options for use in an AutoOpt-ed program. This is done by providing an option definition file that client programs #include into their own option definitions. See “AutoOpt-ed Library for AutoOpt-ed Program” (see section AutoOpt-ed Library for AutoOpt-ed Program) for more details.
  19. Insert the option processing state into Scheme-defined variables. Thus, Guile based applications that are linked with private main() routines can take advantage of all of AutoOpts’ functionality.

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7.2 AutoOpts Licensing

When AutoGen is installed, the AutoOpts project is installed with it. AutoOpts includes various AutoGen templates and a pair of shared libraries. These libraries may be used under the terms of version 3 of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

One of these libraries (libopts) is needed by programs that are built using AutoOpts generated code. This library is available as a separate “tear-off” source tarball. It is redistributable for use under either of two licenses: The above mentioned GNU Lesser General Public License, and the advertising-clause-free BSD license. Both of these license terms are incorporated into appropriate COPYING files included with the libopts source tarball. This source may be incorporated into your package with the following simple commands:

 
rm -rf libopts libopts-*
gunzip -c `autoopts-config libsrc` | \
   tar -xvf -
mv libopts-*.*.* libopts

View the ‘libopts/README’ file for further integration information.


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7.3 Developer and User Notes

AutoOpts has its conventional way of displaying option information that includes somewhat more information that the standard GNU method. AutoOpts will also print out a line of usage text for each option type when options are misspecified. GNU programs typically do not do this. These defaults can be changed on a per-program basis by adding either or both of the following in the option definition file:

 
gnu-usage;
no-misuse-usage;

Users may also override these settings with the AUTOOPTS_USAGE environment variable. It may be set to a comma or white space separated list of the following strings:

gnu

The format of the extended usage text will be displayed in GNU-normal form. The default display for --version will be to include a note on licensing terms.

autoopts

The format of the extended usage will be in AutoOpts’ native layout.

no-misuse-usage

When an option error is made on the command line, the abbreviated usage text will be suppressed.

misuse-usage

When an option error is made on the command line, the abbreviated usage text will be shown.

The setting used is the last one seen. The autoopts and misuse-usage serve no purpose, unless the definition file entries were specified as above.

Note for developers:

The templates used to implement AutoOpts depend heavily upon token pasting. That mens that if you name an option, “debug”, for example, the generated header will expect to be able to emit #define macros such as this:

 
#define DESC(n) (autogenOptions.pOptDesc[INDEX_OPT_## n])

and expect DESC(DEBUG) to expand correctly into (autogenOptions.pOptDesc[INDEX_OPT_DEBUG]). If DEBUG is #defined to something else, then that something else will be in the above expansion.

If you discover you are having strange problems like this, you may wish to use some variation of the guard-option-names See section Program Description Attributes.


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7.4 Quick Start

Since it is generally easier to start with a simple example than it is to look at the options that AutoGen uses itself, here is a very simple AutoOpts example. You can copy this example out of the Info file and into a source file to try it. You can then embellish it into what you really need. For more extensive examples, you can also examine the help output and option definitions for the commands columns, getdefs and autogen itself.

For our simple example, assume you have a program named check that takes two options:

  1. A list of directories to check over for whatever it is check does. You want this option available as a POSIX-style flag option and a GNU long option. You want to allow as many of these as the user wishes.
  2. An option to show or not show the definition tree being used. Only one occurrence is to be allowed, specifying one or the other.

First, specify your program attributes and its options to AutoOpts, as with the following example.

 
AutoGen Definitions options;
prog-name     = check;
prog-title    = "Checkout Automated Options";
long-opts;

main = { main-type = shell-process; };

flag = {
    name      = check-dirs;
    value     = L;        /* flag style option character */
    arg-type  = string;   /* option argument indication  */
    max       = NOLIMIT;  /* occurrence limit (none)     */
    stack-arg;            /* save opt args in a stack    */
    descrip   = "Checkout directory list";
};

flag = {
    name      = show_defs;
    descrip   = "Show the definition tree";
    disable   = dont;     /* mark as enable/disable type */
                          /* option.  Disable as `dont-' */
};

Then perform the following steps:

  1. cflags="-DTEST_CHECK_OPTS `autoopts-config cflags`"
  2. ldflags="`autoopts-config ldflags`"
  3. autogen checkopt.def
  4. cc -o check -g ${cflags} checkopt.c ${ldflags}
  5. ./check --help

Running those commands yields:

 
check - Checkout Automated Options
USAGE:  check [ -<flag> [<val>] | --<name>[{=| }<val>] ]...
  Flg Arg Option-Name    Description
   -L Str check-dirs     Checkout directory list
                                - may appear multiple times
      no  show-defs      Show the definition tree
                                - disabled as --dont-show-defs
   -? no  help           Display extended usage information and exit
   -! no  more-help      Extended usage information passed thru pager

Options are specified by doubled hyphens and their name or by a single
hyphen and the flag character.

Normally, however, you would compile ‘checkopt.c’ as in:

 
cc -o checkopt.o $cflags -c checkopt.c

and link ‘checkopt.o’ with the rest of your program. The main program causes the options to be processed by calling optionProcess (see section optionProcess):

 
main( int argc, char** argv )
{
  {
    int optct = optionProcess( &checkOptions, argc, argv );
    argc -= optct;
    argv += optct;
  }

The options are tested and used as in the following fragment. “ENABLED_OPT” is used instead of “HAVE_OPT” for the show-defs option because it is an enabled/disabled option type:

 
  if (  ENABLED_OPT( SHOW_DEFS )
     && HAVE_OPT( CHECK_DIRS )) {
    int    dirct = STACKCT_OPT( CHECK_DIRS );
    char** dirs  = STACKLST_OPT( CHECK_DIRS );
    while (dirct-- > 0) {
      char* dir = *dirs++;
      ...

A lot of magic happens to make this happen. The rest of this chapter will describe the myriad of option attributes supported by AutoOpts. However, keep in mind that, in general, you won’t need much more than what was described in this "quick start" section.


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7.5 Option Definitions

AutoOpts uses an AutoGen definitions file for the definitions of the program options and overall configuration attributes. The complete list of program and option attributes is quite extensive, so if you are reading to understand how to use AutoOpts, I recommend reading the "Quick Start" section (see section Quick Start) and paying attention to the following:

  1. prog-name, prog-title, and argument, program attributes, See section Program Description Attributes.
  2. name and descrip option attributes, See section Required Attributes.
  3. value (flag character) and min (occurrence counts) option attributes, See section Common Option Attributes.
  4. arg-type from the option argument specification section, See section Option Argument Specification.
  5. Read the overall how to, See section Using AutoOpts.
  6. Highly recommended, but not required, are the several "man" and "info" documentation attributes, See section Man and Info doc Attributes.

Keep in mind that the majority are rarely used and can be safely ignored. However, when you have special option processing requirements, the flexibility is there.


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7.5.1 Program Description Attributes

The following global definitions are used to define attributes of the entire program. These generally alter the configuration or global behavior of the AutoOpts option parser. The first two are required of every program. The third is required if there are to be any left over arguments (operands) after option processing. The rest have been grouped below. Except as noted, there may be only one copy of each of these definitions:

prog-name

This attribute is required. Variable names derived from this name are derived using string->c_name! (see section string->c-name!’ - map non-name chars to underscore).

prog-title

This attribute is required and may be any descriptive text.

argument

This attribute is required if your program uses operand arguments. It specifies the syntax of the arguments that follow the options. It may not be empty, but if it is not supplied, then option processing must consume all the arguments. If it is supplied and starts with an open bracket ([), then there is no requirement on the presence or absence of command line arguments following the options. Lastly, if it is supplied and does not start with an open bracket, then option processing must not consume all of the command line arguments.


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7.5.1.1 Usage and Version Info Display

These will affect the way usage is seen and whether or not version information gets displayed.

full-usage

If this attribute is provided, it may specify the full length usage text, or a variable name assignable to a “char const *” pointer, or it may be empty. The meanings are determined by the length.

This string should be readily translatable and provision will be made to translate it if this is provided and the source code is compiled with “ENABLE_NLS” defined.

short-usage

If this attribute is provided, it is used to specify an abbreviated version of the usage text. This text is constructed in the same way as the “full-usage”, described above.

gnu-usage

AutoOpts normaly displays usage text in a format that provides more information than the standard GNU layout, but that also means it is not the standard GNU layout. This attribute changes the default to GNU layout, with the AUTOOPTS_USAGE environment variable used to request autoopts layout. See See section Developer and User Notes.

no-misuse-usage

When there is a command line syntax error, by default AutoOpts will display the abbreviated usage text, rather than just a one line “you goofed it, ask for usage” message. You can change the default behavior for your program by supplying this attribute. The user may override this choice, again, with the AUTOOPTS_USAGE environment variable. See See section Developer and User Notes.

prog-group

The version text in the ‘getopt.tpl’ template will include this text in parentheses after the program name, when this attribute is specified. For example:

 
mumble (stumble) 1.0

says that the “mumble” program is version 1.0 and is part of the “stumble” group of programs.

version

Specifies the program version and activates the VERSION option, See section Automatically Supported Options.


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7.5.1.2 Program Configuration

Programs may be “pre-configured” before normal command line options are processed (See see section Immediate Action Attributes). How configuration files and environment variables are handled get specified with these attributes.

disable-load
disable-save

Indicates that the command line usage of --load-opts and/or --save-opts are disallowed.

environrc

Indicates looking in the environment for values of variables named, PROGRAM_OPTNAME or PROGRAM, where PROGRAM is the upper cased C-name of the program and OPTNAME is the upper cased C-name of a specific option. The contents of the PROGRAM variable, if found, are tokenized and processed. The contents of PROGRAM_OPTNAME environment variables are taken as the option argument to the option nameed optname.

homerc

Specifies either a directory or a file using a specific path, a path based on an environment variable or a path relative to installation directories. The method used depends on the first two characters of the name. If the first character is not the dollar character ($), then it is presumed to be a path name based on the current directory.

Otherwise, the method depends on the second character:

$

The path is relative to the directory where the executable was found.

@

The path is relative to the package data directory, e.g. /usr/local/share/autogen.

[a-zA-Z]

The path is derived from the named environment variable.

Use as many as you like. The presence of this attribute activates the --save-opts and --load-opts options. See the optionMakePath(3AGEN) man page for excruciating details. See section configuration file presets.

rcfile

Specifies the configuration file name. This is only useful if you have provided at least one homerc attribute. default: .<prog-name>rc


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7.5.1.3 Programming Details

These attributes affect some of the ways that the option data are used and made available to the program.

config-header

The contents of this attribute should be just the name of the configuration file. A "#include" naming this file will be inserted at the top of the generated header.

exit-name
exit-desc

These values should be defined as indexed values, thus:

 
exit-name[0] = success;
exit-desc[0] = 'Successful program execution.';
exit-name[1] = failure;
exit-desc[1] = 'The operation failed or command syntax was not valid.';

By default, all programs have these effectively defined for them. They may be overridden by explicitly defining any or all of these values. Additional names and descriptions may be defined. They will cause an enumeration to be emitted, like this one for getdefs:

 
typedef enum {
    GETDEFS_EXIT_SUCCESS = 0,
    GETDEFS_EXIT_FAILURE = 1
} getdefs_exit_code_t;

which will be augmented by any exit-name definitions beyond “1”.

usage-message

This attribute will cause two procedures to be added to the code file: usage_message and vusage_message, with any applicable prefix (see prefix, below). They are declared in the generated header, thus:

 
extern void vusage_message(char const * fmt, va_list ap);
extern void usage_message(char const * fmt, ...);

These functions print the message to ‘stderr’ and invoke the usage function with the exit code set to 1 (EXIT_FAILURE).

export

This string is inserted into the .h interface file. Generally used for global variables or #include directives required by flag-code text and shared with other program text. Do not specify your configuration header (‘config.h’) in this attribute or the include attribute, however. Instead, use config-header, above.

guard-option-names

AutoOpts generates macros that presume that there are no cpp macros with the same name as the option name. For example, if you have an option named, debug, then you must not use #ifdef DEBUG in your code. If you specify this attribute, every option name will be guarded. If the name is #define-d, then a warning will be issued and the name undefined. If you do not specify this and there is a conflict, you will get strange error messages.

This attribute may be set to any of four recognized states:

include

This string is inserted into the .c file. Generally used for global variables required only by flag-code program text.

no-libopts

If you are going to handle your option processing with the getopt.tpl template instead of using libopts, then specify this attribute. It will suppress mention of --more-help in the generated documentation. (getopt_long does not support --more-help.)

prefix

This value is inserted into all global names. This will disambiguate them if more than one set of options are to be compiled into a single program.


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7.5.1.4 User Presentation Attributes

Attributes that affect the user’s experience.

allow-errors

The presence of this attribute indicates ignoring any command line option errors. This may also be turned on and off by invoking the macros ERRSKIP_OPTERR and ERRSTOP_OPTERR from the generated interface file.

long-opts

Presence indicates GNU-standard long option processing. Partial name matches are accepted, if they are at least two characters long and the partial match is unique. The matching is not case sensitive, and the underscore, hyphen and carat characters are all equivalent (they match).

If any options do not have an option value (flag character) specified, and least one does specify such a value, then you must specify long-opts. If none of your options specify an option value (flag character) and you do not specify long-opts, then command line arguments are processed in "named option mode". This means that:

no-xlate

Modifies when or whether option names get translated. If provided, it must be assigned one of two values:

opt-cfg

to suppress option name translation for configuration file and and environment variable processing.

opt

to suppress option name translation completely. The usage text will always be translated if ENABLE_NLS is defined and you have translations for that text.

See also the various “XLAT” interface entries in the AutoOpts Programmatic Interface section (see section Programmatic Interface).

reorder-args

Normally, POSIX compliant commands do not allow for options to be interleaved with operands. If this is necessary for historical reasons, there are two approaches available:

resettable

Specifies that the --reset-option command line option is to be supported. This makes it possible to suppress any setting that might be found in a configuration file or environment variable.


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7.5.2 Options for Library Code

Some libraries provide their own code for processing command line options, and this may be used by programs that utilize AutoOpts. You may also wish to write a library that gets configured with AutoOpts options and config files. Such a library may either supply its own configury routine and process its own options, or it may export its option descriptions to programs that also use AutoOpts. This section will describe how to do all of these different things.


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7.5.2.1 AutoOpt-ed Library for AutoOpt-ed Program

The library source code must provide an option definition file that consists of only the attribute library and flag entries. The “library” attribute does not need any associated value, so it will generally appeary by itself on a line folowed by a semi-colon. The first flag entry must contain the following attributes:

name

This name is used in the construction of a global pointer of type tOptDesc const*. It is always required.

documentation

It tells AutoOpts that this option serves no normal purpose. It will be used to add usage clarity and to locate option descriptors in the library code.

descrip

This is a string that is inserted in the extended usage display before the options specific to the current library. It is always required.

lib-name

This should match the name of the library. This string is also used in the construction of the option descriptor pointer name. In the end, it looks like this:

 
extern tOptDesc const* <<lib-name>>_<<name>>_optDesc_p;

and is used in the macros generated for the library’s .h file.

In order to compile this AutoOpts using library, you must create a special header that is not used by the client program. This is accomplished by creating an option definition file that contains essentially exactly the following:

 
AutoGen definitions options;
prog-name  = does-not-matter;  // but is always required
prog-title = 'also does not matter';  // also required
config-header = 'config.h'; // optional, but common
library;
#include library-options-only.def

and nothing else. AutoGen will produce only the .h file. You may now compile your library, referencing just this .h file. The macros it creates will utilize a global variable that will be defined by the AutoOpts-using client program. That program will need to have the following #include in its option definition file:

 
#include library-options-only.def

All the right things will magically happen so that the global variables named <<lib-name>>_<<name>>_optDesc_p are initialized correctly. For an example, please see the AutoOpts test script: ‘autoopts/test/library.test’.


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7.5.2.2 AutoOpt-ed Library for Regular Program

In this case, your library must provide an option processing function to a calling program. This is accomplished by setting the allow-errors global option attribute. Each time your option handling function is called, you must determine where your scan is to resume and tell the AutoOpts library by invoking:

 
RESTART_OPT(next_arg_index);

and then invoke not_opt_index = optionProcess(...). The not_opt_index value can be used to set optind, if that is the global being used to scan the program argument array.

In this method, do NOT utilize the global library attribute. Your library must specify its options as if it were a complete program. You may choose to specify an alternate usage() function so that usage for other parts of the option interface may be displayed as well. See “Program Information Attributes” (see section Program Information Attributes).

At the moment, there is no method for calling optionUsage() telling it to produce just the information about the options and not the program as a whole. Some later revision after somebody asks.


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7.5.2.3 AutoOpt-ed Program Calls Regular Library

As with providing an AutoOpt-ed library to a non-AutoOpt-ed program, you must write the option description file as if you were writing all the options for the program, but you should specify the allow-errors global option attribute and you will likely want an alternate usage() function (see “Program Information Attributes” see section Program Information Attributes). In this case, though, when optionProcess() returns, you need to test to see if there might be library options. If there might be, then call the library’s exported routine for handling command line options, set the next-option-to-process with the RESTART_OPT() macro, and recall optionProcess(). Repeat until done.


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7.5.3 Program Information Attributes

These attributes are used to define how and what information is displayed to the user of the program.

copyright

The copyright is a structured value containing three to five values. If copyright is used, then the first three are required.

  1. date’ - the list of applicable dates for the copyright.
  2. owner’ - the name of the copyright holder.
  3. type’ - specifies the type of distribution license. AutoOpts/AutoGen will automatically support the text of the GNU Public License (‘GPL’), the GNU General Public License with Library extensions (‘LGPL’), the Free BSD license (‘BSD’), and a write-it-yourself copyright notice (‘NOTE’). Only these values are recognized.
  4. text’ - the text of the copyright notice. It is only needed if ‘type’ is set to ‘NOTE’.
  5. author’ - in case the author name is to appear in the documentation and is different from the copyright owner.
  6. eaddr’ - email address for receiving praises and complaints. Typically that of the author or copyright holder.

An example of this might be:

 
copyright = {
    date  = "1992-2008";
    owner = "Bruce Korb";
    eaddr = 'bkorb@gnu.org';
    type  = GPL;
};
detail

This string is added to the usage output when the HELP option is selected.

explain

Gives additional information whenever the usage routine is invoked.

package

The name of the package the program belongs to. This will appear parenthetically after the program name in the version and usage output, e.g.: autogen (GNU autogen) - The Automated Program Generator.

preserve-case

This attribute will not change anything except appearance. Normally, the option names are all documented in lower case. However, if you specify this attribute, then they will display in the case used in their specification. Command line options will still be matched without case sensitivity.

prog-desc and
opts-ptr

These define global pointer variables that point to the program descriptor and the first option descriptor for a library option. This is intended for use by certain libraries that need command line and/or initialization file option processing. These definitions have no effect on the option template output, but are used for creating a library interface file. Normally, the first "option" for a library will be a documentation option that cannot be specified on the command line, but is marked as settable. The library client program will invoke the SET_OPTION macro which will invoke a handler function that will finally set these global variables.

usage

Optionally names the usage procedure, if the library routine optionUsage() does not work for you. If you specify my_usage as the value of this attribute, for example, you will use a procedure by that name for displaying usage. Of course, you will need to provide that procedure and it must conform to this profile:

 
void my_usage( tOptions* pOptions, int exitCode )
gnu-usage

Normally, the default format produced by the optionUsage procedure is AutoOpts Standard. By specifying this attribute, the default format will be GNU-ish style. Either default may be overridden by the user with the AUTOOPTS_USAGE environment variable. If it is set to gnu or autoopts, it will alter the style appropriately. This attribute will conflict with the usage attribute.

reorder-args

Some applications traditionally require that the command operands be intermixed with the command options. In order to handle that, the arguments must be reordered. If you are writing such an application, specify this global option. All of the options (and any associated option arguments) will be brought to the beginning of the argument list. New applications should not use this feature, if at all possible. This feature is disabled if POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined in the environment.


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7.5.4 Generating main procedures

When AutoOpts generates the code to parse the command line options, it has the ability to produce any of several types of main() procedures. This is done by specifying a global structured value for main. The values that it contains are dependent on the value set for the one value it must have: main-type.

The recognized values for main-type are:

Here is an example of an include variation:

 
main = {
  main-type = include;
  tpl       = "main-template.tpl";
};

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7.5.4.1 guile: main and inner_main procedures

When the main-type is specified to be guile, a main() procedure is generated that calls gh_enter(), providing it with a generated inner_main() to invoke. If you must perform certain tasks before calling gh_enter(), you may specify such code in the value for the before-guile-boot attribute.

The inner_main() procedure itself will process the command line arguments (by calling optionProcess(), see section optionProcess), and then either invoke the code specified with the guile-main attribute, or else export the parsed options to Guile symbols and invoke the scm_shell() function from the Guile library. This latter will render the program nearly identical to the stock guile(1) program.


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7.5.4.2 shell-process: emit Bourne shell results

This will produce a main() procedure that parses the command line options and emits to ‘stdout’ Bourne shell commands that puts the option state into environment variables. This can be used within a shell script as follows:

 
unset OPTION_CT
eval "`opt_parser \"$@\"`"
test -z "${OPTION_CT}" && exit 1
test ${OPTION_CT} -gt 0 && shift ${OPTION_CT}

If the option parsing code detects an error or a request for usage, it will not emit an assignment to OPTION_CT and the script should just exit. If the options are set consistently, then something along the lines of the following will be written to ‘stdout’ and evaled:

 
    OPTION_CT=4
    export OPTION_CT
    MYPROG_SECOND='first'
    export MYPROG_SECOND
    MYPROG_ANOTHER=1 # 0x1
    export MYPROG_ANOTHER

If the arguments are to be reordered, however, then the resulting set of operands will be emitted and OPTION_CT gets set to zero. For example, the following would be appended to the above:

 
    set -- 'operand1' 'operand2' 'operand3'
    OPTION_CT=0

OPTION_CT is set to zero since it is not necessary to shift off any options.


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7.5.4.3 shell-parser: emit Bourne shell script

This will produce a main() procedure that emits a shell script that will parse the command line options. That script can be emitted to ‘stdout’ or inserted or substituted into a pre-existing shell script file. Improbable markers are used to identify previously inserted parsing text:

 
# # # # # # # # # # -- do not modify this marker --

The program is also pretty insistent upon starting its parsing script on the second line.


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7.5.4.4 main: user supplied main procedure

You must supply a value for the main-text attribute. You may also supply a value for option-code. If you do, then the optionProcess invocation will not be emitted into the code. AutoOpts will wrap the main-text inside of:

 
int
main( int argc, char** argv )
{
    { // replaced by option-code, if that exists
        int ct = optionProcess( &<<prog-name>>Options, argc, argv );
        argc -= ct;
        argv += ct;
    }
<<your main-text goes here>>
}

so you can most conveniently set the value with a “here string” (see section A Here String):

 
code = <<- _EndOfMainProc_
	<<your text goes here>>
	_EndOfMainProc_;

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7.5.4.5 include: code emitted from included template

You must write a template to produce your main procedure. You specify the name of the template with the tpl attribute and it will be incorporated at the point where AutoOpts is ready to emit the main() procedure.

This can be very useful if, in your working environment, you have many programs with highly similar main() procedures. All you need to do is parameterize the variations and specify which variant is needed within the main AutoOpts specification. Since you are coding the template for this, the attributes needed for this variation would be dictated by your template.


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7.5.4.6 invoke: code emitted from AutoGen macro

You must write a template to produce your main procedure. That template must contain a definition for the function specified with the func attribute to this main() procedure specification. Typically, this template will be incorporated by using the --lib-template option (see section lib-template option (-l)) in the AutoGen invocation. Otherwise, this variation operates in much the same way as “include” (see section include: code emitted from included template) method.


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7.5.4.7 for-each: perform function on each argument

This produces a main procedure that invokes a procedure once for each operand on the command line (non-option arguments), OR once for each non-blank, non-comment stdin input line. Leading and trailing white space is trimmed from the input line and comment lines are lines that are empty or begin with a comment character, defaulting to a hash (’#’) character.

NB: The argument program attribute (see section Program Description Attributes) must begin with the [ character, to indicate that there are command operands, but that they are optional.

There are a number of attributes to main that may be used:

handler-proc

This attribute is required. It is used to name the procedure to call. That procedure is presumed to be external, but if you provide the code for it, then the procedure is emitted as a static procedure in the generated code.

This procedure should return 0 on success, a cumulative error code on warning and exit without returning on an unrecoverable error. As the cumulative warning codes are or-ed together, the codes should be some sort of bit mask in order to be ultimately decipherable (if you need to do that).

If the called procedure needs to cause a fail-exit, it is expected to call exit(3) directly. If you want to cause a warning exit code, then this handler function should return a non-zero status. That value will be OR-ed into a result integer for computing the final exit code. E.g., here is part of the emitted code:

 
  int res = 0;
  if (argc > 0) {
     do  {
         res |= my_handler( *(argv++) );
     } while (--argc > 0);
  } else { ...
handler-type

If you do not supply this attribute, your handler procedure must be the default type. The profile of the procedure must be:

 
int my_handler( char const *pz_entry );

However, if you do supply this attribute, you may set the value to any of four alternate flavors:

name-of-file

This is essentially the same as the default handler type, except that before your procedure is invoked, the generated code has verified that the string names an existing file. The profile is unchanged.

file-X

Before calling your procedure, the file is f-opened according to the “X”, where “X” may be any of the legal modes for fopen(3C). In this case, the profile for your procedure must be:

 
int my_handler( char const* pz_fname, FILE* entry_fp );
text-of-file
some-text-of-file

Before calling your procedure, the contents of the file are read or mapped into memory. (Excessively large files may cause problems.) The ‘some-text-of-file’ disallows empty files. Both require regular files. In this case, the profile for your procedure must be:

 
program_exit_code_t
my_handler(char const* pz_fname, char* file_text,
           size_t text_size);

Note that though the file_text is not const, any changes made to it are not written back to the original file. It is merely a memory image of the file contents. Also, the memory allocated to hold the text is text_size + 1 bytes long and the final byte is always NUL. The file contents need not be text, as the data are read with the read(2) system call.

If you select one of these file type handlers, then on access or usage errors the PROGRAM_EXIT_FAILURE exit code will, by default, be or-ed into the final exit code. This can be changed by specifying the global file-fail-code attribute and naming a different value. That is, something other than failure. You may choose success, in which case file access issues will not affect the exit code and the error message will not be printed.

my_handler-code

With this attribute, you provide the code for your handler procedure in the option definition file. In this case, your main() procedure specification might look something like this:

 
main = {
  main-type    = for-each;
  handler-proc = my_handler;
  my_handler-code = <<- EndOfMyCode
	/* whatever you want to do */
	EndOfMyCode;
};

and instead of an emitted external reference, a procedure will be emitted that looks like this:

 
static int
my_handler( char const* pz_entry )
{
    int res = 0;
    <<my_handler-code goes here>>
    return res;
}
main-init

This is code that gets inserted after the options have been processed, but before the handler procs get invoked.

main-fini

This is code that gets inserted after all the entries have been processed, just before returning from main().

comment-char

If you wish comment lines to start with a character other than a hash (#) character, then specify one character with this attribute. If that character is the NUL byte, then only blank lines will be considered comments.


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7.5.5 Option Attributes

For each option you wish to specify, you must have a block macro named flag defined. There are two required attributes: name and descrip. If any options do not have a value (traditional flag character) attribute, then the long-opts program attribute must also be defined. As a special exception, if no options have a value and long-opts is not defined and argument is not defined, then all arguments to the program are named options. In this case, the - and -- command line option markers are optional.


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7.5.5.1 Required Attributes

Every option must have exactly one copy of both of these attributes.

name

Long name for the option. Even if you are not accepting long options and are only accepting flags, it must be provided. AutoOpts generates private, named storage that requires this name. This name also causes a #define-d name to be emitted. It must not conflict with any other names you may be using in your program.

For example, if your option name is, debug or munged-up, you must not use the #define names DEBUG (or MUNGED_UP) in your program for non-AutoOpts related purposes. They are now used by AutoOpts.

Sometimes (most especially under Windows), you may get a surprise. For example, INTERFACE is apparently a user space name that one should be free to use. Windows usurps this name. To solve this, you must do one of the following:

  1. Change the name of your option
  2. add the program attribute (see section Program Description Attributes):
     
    export = '#undef INTERFACE';
    
  3. add the program attribute:
     
    guard-option-names;
    
descrip

Except for documentation options, a very brief description of the option. About 40 characters on one line, maximum. It appears on the usage() output next to the option name. If, however, the option is a documentation option, it will appear on one or more lines by itself. It is thus used to visually separate and comment upon groups of options in the usage text.


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7.5.5.2 Common Option Attributes

These option attributes are optional. Any that do appear in the definition of a flag, may appear only once.

value

The flag character to specify for traditional option flags, e.g., -L.

max

Maximum occurrence count (invalid if disable present). The default maximum is 1. NOLIMIT can be used for the value, otherwise it must be a number or a #define that evaluates to a number.

min

Minimum occurrence count. If present, then the option must appear on the command line. Do not define it with the value zero (0).

must-set

If an option must be specified, but it need not be specified on the command line, then specify this attribute for the option.

deprecated

There are two effects to this attribute: the usage text will not show the option, and the generated documentation will mark it with: “NOTE: THIS OPTION IS DEPRECATED”.

disable

Prefix for disabling (inverting sense of) the option. Only useful if long option names are being processed.

enable

Long-name prefix for enabling the option (invalid if disable not present). Only useful if long option names are being processed.

enabled

If default is for option being enabled. (Otherwise, the OPTST_DISABLED bit is set at compile time.) Only useful if the option can be disabled.

ifdef
ifndef
omitted-usage

If an option is relevant on certain platforms or when certain features are enabled or disabled, you can specify the compile time flag used to indicate when the option should be compiled in or out. For example, if you have a configurable feature, mumble that is indicated with the compile time define, WITH_MUMBLING, then add:

 
ifdef = WITH_MUMBLING;

Take care when using these. There are several caveats:

no-command

This option specifies that the option is not allowed on the command line. Such an option may not take a value (flag character) attribute. The program must have the homerc (see section Program Description Attributes) option set.


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7.5.5.3 Immediate Action Attributes

Certain options may need to be processed early. For example, in order to suppress the processing of configuration files, it is necessary to process the command line option --no-load-opts before the config files are processed. To accommodate this, certain options may have their enabled or disabled forms marked for immediate processing. The consequence of this is that they are processed ahead of all other options in the reverse of normal order.

Normally, the first options processed are the options specified in the first homerc file, followed by then next homerc file through to the end of config file processing. Next, environment variables are processed and finally, the command line options. The later options override settings processed earlier. That actually gives them higher priority. Command line immediate action options actually have the lowest priority of all. They would be used only if they are to have an effect on the processing of subsequent options.

immediate

Use this option attribute to specify that the enabled form of the option is to be processed immediately. The help and more-help options are so specified. They will also call exit() upon completion, so they do have an effect on the processing of the remaining options :-).

immed-disable

Use this option attribute to specify that the disabled form of the option is to be processed immediately. The load-opts option is so specified. The --no-load-opts command line option will suppress the processing of config files and environment variables. Contrariwise, the --load-opts command line option is processed normally. That means that the options specified in that file will be processed after all the homerc files and, in fact, after options that precede it on the command line.

also

If either the immediate or the immed-disable attributes are set to the string, “also”, then the option will actually be processed twice: first at the immediate processing phase and again at the “normal” time.


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7.5.5.4 Option Conflict Attributes

These attributes may be used as many times as you need. They are used at the end of the option processing to verify that the context within which each option is found does not conflict with the presence or absence of other options.

This is not a complete cover of all possible conflicts and requirements, but it simple to implement and covers the more common situations.

flags-must

one entry for every option that must be present when this option is present

flags-cant

one entry for every option that cannot be present when this option is present


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7.5.5.5 Program may set option

If the option can be set outside of option processing, specify “settable”. If this attribute is defined, special macros for setting this particular option will be inserted into the interface file. For example, TEMPL_DIRS is a settable option for AutoGen, so a macro named SET_OPT_TEMPL_DIRS(a) appears in the interface file. This attribute interacts with the documentation attribute.


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7.5.5.6 Option cannot be pre-configured

If presetting this option is not allowed, specify “no-preset”. (Thus, environment variables and values set in configuration files will be ignored.)


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7.5.5.7 Option Equivalence Class

Generally, when several options are mutually exclusive and basically serve the purpose of selecting one of several processing modes, specify the “equivalence” attribute. These options will be considered an equivalence class. Sometimes, it is just easier to deal with them as such. All members of the equivalence class must contain the same equivalenced-to option, including the equivalenced-to option itself. Thus, it must be a class member.

For an option equivalence class, there is a single occurrence counter for the class. It can be referenced with the interface macro, COUNT_OPT(BASE_OPTION), where “BASE_OPTION” is the equivalenced-to option name.

Also, please take careful note: since the options are mapped to the equivalenced-to option descriptor, any option argument values are mapped to that descriptor also. Be sure you know which “equivalent option” was selected before getting an option argument value!

During the presetting phase of option processing (see section Configuring your program), equivalenced options may be specified. However, if different equivalenced members are specified, only the last instance will be recognized and the others will be discarded. A conflict error is indicated only when multiple different members appear on the command line itself.

As an example of where equivalenced options might be useful, cpio(1) has three options -o, -i, and -p that define the operational mode of the program (create, extract and pass-through, respectively). They form an equivalence class from which one and only one member must appear on the command line. If cpio were an AutoOpt-ed program, then each of these option definitions would contain:

 
equivalence = create;

and the program would be able to determine the operating mode with code that worked something like this:

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_CREATE) {
case INDEX_OPT_CREATE:       ...
case INDEX_OPT_EXTRACT:      ...
case INDEX_OPT_PASS_THROUGH: ...
default:    /* cannot happen */
}

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7.5.5.8 Option Aliasing

Sometimes, for backwards compatibility or tradition or just plain convenience, it works better to define one option as a pure alias for another option. For such situations, provide the following pieces of information:

 
flag = {
   name  = aliasing-option-name;
   value = aliasing-flag-char; // optional !
   aliases = aliased-to-option;
};

Do not provide anything else. The usage text for such an option will be:

 
   alais for aliased-to-option option

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7.5.5.9 Default Option

If your program processes its arguments in named option mode (See “long-opts” in Program Description Attributes), then you may select one of your options to be the default option. Do so by using attribute “default” with one of the options. The option so specified must have an arg-type (see section Option Argument Specification) specified, but not the arg-optional (see section Option Argument Optional) attribute. That is to say, the option argument must be required.

If you have done this, then any arguments that do not match an option name and do not contain an equal sign (=) will be interpreted as an option argument to the default option.


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7.5.5.10 Option Sectioning Comment

This attribute means the option exists for the purpose of separating option description text in the usage output. Libraries may choose to make it settable so that the library can determine which command line option is the first one that pertains to the library.

If the “documentation” attribute is present, then all other attributes are disabled except settable, call-proc and flag-code. settable must be and is only specified if call-proc, extract-code or flag-code has been specified. When present, the descrip attribute will be displayed only when the --help option has been specified. It will be displayed flush to the left hand margin and may consist of one or more lines of text. The name of the option will not be printed.

Documentation options are for clarifying the usage text and will not appear in generated man pages or in the generated invoking texinfo doc.


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7.5.5.11 Translator Notes

If you need to give the translators a special note about a particular option, please use the “translators” attribute. The attribute text will be emitted into the generated .c text where the option related strings get defined. To make a general comment about all of the option code, add comments to an include attribute (see section Program Description Attributes). Do not use this attribute globally, or it will get emitted into every option definition block.


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7.5.6 Option Argument Specification

Command line options come in three flavors: options that do not take arguments, those that do and those that may. Without an "arg-type" attribute, AutoOpts will not process an argument to an option. If "arg-type" is specified and "arg-optional" is also specified, then the next command line token will be taken to be an argument, unless it looks like the name of another option.

If the argument type is specified to be anything other than "str[ing]", then AutoOpts will specify a callback procedure to handle the argument. Some of these procedures will be created and inserted into the generated .c file, and others are already built into the ‘libopts’ library. Therefore, if you write your own callback procedure (see section Option Argument Handling), then you must either not specify an "arg-type" attribute, or else specify it to be of type "str[ing]". Your callback function will be able to place its own restrictions on what that string may contain or represent.

Option argument handling attributes depend upon the value set for the arg-type attribute. It specifies the type of argument the option will take. If not present, the option cannot take an argument. If present, it must be an entry in the following table. The first three letters is sufficient.


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7.5.6.1 Arg Type String

arg-type = string;

The argument may be any arbitrary string, though your program or option callback procedure may place additional constraints upon it.


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7.5.6.2 Arg Type Number

arg-type = number;

The argument must be a correctly formed integer, without any trailing U’s or L’s. AutoOpts contains a library procedure to convert the string to a number. If you specify range checking with arg-range (see below), then AutoOpts produces a special purpose procedure for this option.

scaled

scaled marks the option so that suffixes of ‘k’, ‘K’, ‘m’, ‘M’, ‘g’, ‘G’, ‘t’, and ‘T’ will multiply the given number by a power of 1000 or 1024. Lower case letters scale by a power of 1000 and upper case scale by a power of 1024.

arg-range

arg-range is used to create a callback procedure for validating the range of the option argument. It must match one of the range entries. Each arg-range should consist of either an integer by itself or an integer range. The integer range is specified by one or two integers separated by the two character sequence, ->. Be sure to quote the entire range string. The definitions parser will not accept the range syntax as a single string token.

The generated procedure imposes the range constraints as follows:


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7.5.6.3 Arg Type Boolean

arg-type = boolean;

The argument will be interpreted and always yield either AG_TRUE or AG_FALSE. False values are the empty string, the number zero, or a string that starts with f, F, n or N (representing False or No). Anything else will be interpreted as True.


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7.5.6.4 Arg Type Keyword

arg-type = keyword;

The argument must match a specified list of strings (see section Keyword list). Assuming you have named the option, optn-name, the strings will be converted into an enumeration of type te_Optn_Name with the values OPTN_NAME_KEYWORD.* If you have not specified a default value, the value OPTN_NAME_UNDEFINED will be inserted with the value zero. The option will be initialized to that value. You may now use this in your code as follows:

 
te_Optn_Name opt = OPT_VALUE_OPTN_NAME;
switch (opt) {
case OPTN_NAME_UNDEFINED:  /* undefined things */ break;
case OPTN_NAME_KEYWORD:    /* `keyword' things */ break;
default: /* utterly impossible */ ;
}

AutoOpts produces a special purpose procedure for this option.

If you have need for the string name of the selected keyword, you may obtain this with the macro, OPT_OPTN_NAME_VAL2STR(val). The value you pass would normally be OPT_VALUE_OPTN_NAME, but anything with numeric value that is legal for te_Optn_Name may be passed. Anything out of range will result in the string, "*INVALID*" being returned. The strings are read only. It may be used as in:

 
te_Optn_Name opt = OPT_VALUE_OPTN_NAME;
printf( "you selected the %s keyword\n",
        OPT_OPTN_NAME_VAL2STR(opt) );

* Note: you may replace the OPTN_NAME enumeration prefix with another prefix by specifying a prefix-enum attribute.


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7.5.6.5 Arg Type Set Membership

arg-type = set;

The argument must be a list of names each of which must match the strings "all", "none" or one of the keywords (see section Keyword list) specified for this option. all will turn on all membership bits and none will turn them all off. Specifying one of the keywords will turn on the corresponding set membership bit. Literal numbers may also be used and may, thereby, set or clear more than one bit. Preceding a keyword or literal number with a bang (! - exclamation point) will turn the bit(s) off. The number of keywords allowed is constrained by the number of bits in a pointer, as the bit set is kept in a void*.

If, for example, you specified first in your list of keywords, then you can use the following code to test to see if either first or all was specified:

 
uintptr_t opt = OPT_VALUE_OPTN_NAME;
if (opt & OPTN_NAME_FIRST)
    /* OPTN_NAME_FIRST bit was set */ ;

AutoOpts produces a special purpose procedure for this option. To set multiple bits as the default (initial) value, you must specify an initial numeric value (which might become inaccurate over time), or else specify arg-default multiple times. Do not specify a series of names conjoined with + symbols as the value for any of the arg-default attributes. That works for option parsing, but not for the option code generation.


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7.5.6.6 Arg Type Hierarchical

arg-type = hierarchy;
arg-type = nested;

This denotes an option with a structure-valued argument, a.k.a. “subopts” in getopts terminology. The argument is parsed and the values made available to the program via the find and find next calls (See section optionFindValue, See section optionGetValue, and see section optionFindNextValue).

 
tOptionValue * val = optionGetValue(VALUE_OPT_OPTN_NAME, "name");
while (val != NULL) {
  process(val);
  val = optionNextValue(VALUE_OPT_OPTN_NAME, val);
  if (wrong_name(val, "name"))
    break;
}

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7.5.6.7 Arg Type File Name

arg-type = file;

This argument type will have some validations on the argument and, optionally, actually open the file. You must specify several additonal attributes for the option:

file-exists

If not specified or empty, then the directory portion of the name is checked. The directory must exist or the argument is rejected and the usage procedure is invoked.

Otherwise, both the directory as above and the full name is tested for existence. If the value begins with the two letters “no”, then the file must not pre-exist. Otherwise, the file is expected to exist.

open-file

If not specified or empty, the file is left alone. If the value begins with the four letters “desc”[riptor], then open(2) is used and optArg.argFd is set. Otherwise, the file is opened with fopen and optArg.argFp is set.

file-mode

If “open-file” is set and not empty, then you must specify the open mode. Set the value to the flag bits or mode string as appropriate for the open type.


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7.5.6.8 Arg Type Time Duration

arg-type = time-duration;

The argument will be converted into a number of seconds. It may be a multi-part number with different parts being multiplied into a seconds value and added into the final result. Valid forms are in the table below. Upper cased letters represent numbers that must be used in the expressions.

[[HH:]MM:]SS

where the hyphens (-) are really colons(:), but the texi doc system won’t allow colons there.

HH is multiplied by 3600 and MM multiplied by 60 before they are added to SS. This time specification may not be followed by any other time specs. HH and MM are both optional, though HH cannot be specified without MM.

DAYS d

DAYS is multiplied by the number of seconds in a day. This value may be followed by (and added to) values specified by HH:MM:SS or the suffixed values below. If present, it must always be first.

HRS h

HRS is multiplied by the number of seconds in an hour. This value may be followed by (and added to) values specified by MM:SS or the suffixed values below.

MINS m

MINS is multiplied by the number of seconds in a minute. This value may be followed by (and added to) a count of seconds.

SECS s

This value can only be the last value in a time specification. The s suffix is optional.

 
   5 d 1:10:05    ==> 5 days + 1 hour 10 minutes and 5 seconds
   5 d 1 h 10 m 5 ==> yields: 436205 seconds
   5d1h10m5s      ==> same result -- spaces are optional.

When saved into a config file, the value will be stored as a simple count of seconds. There are actually more (many) accepted time duration strings. The full documentation can be found with ISO-8601 documentation and the more extedded documentation when “parse_duration()” becomes more widely available.


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7.5.6.9 Arg Type Time and Date

arg-type = time-date;

The argument will be converted into the number of seconds since the epoch. The conversion rules are very complicated, please see the ‘getdate_r(3GNU)’ man page. There are some additional restrictions:

  1. Your project must be compiled with PKGDATADIR defined and naming a valid directory.
  2. The DATEMSK environment variable will be set to the ‘datemsk’ file within that directory.

If that file is not accessible for any reason, the string will be parsed as a time duration (see section Arg Type Time Duration) instead of a specific date and time.


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7.5.6.10 Keyword list

If the arg-type is keyword (see section Arg Type Keyword) or set-membership (see section Arg Type Set Membership), then you must specify the list of keywords by a series of keyword entries. The interface file will contain values for <OPTN_NAME>_<KEYWORD> for each keyword entry. keyword option types will have an enumeration and set-membership option types will have a set of unsigned bits #define-d.

If the arg-type is specifically keyword, you may also add special handling code with a extra-code attribute. After optionEnumerationVal has converted the input string into an enumeration, you may insert code to process this enumeration value (pOptDesc->optArg.argEnum).


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7.5.6.11 Option Argument Optional

This attribute indicates that the user does not have to supply an argument for the option. This is only valid if the arg-type is string (see section Arg Type String) or keyword (see section Arg Type Keyword). If it is keyword, then this attribute may also specify the default keyword to assume when the argument is not supplied. If left empty, arg-default (see section Default Option Argument Value) or the zero-valued keyword will be used.

This is overridden and the options are required if the libopts library gets configured with --disable-optional-args.


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7.5.6.12 Default Option Argument Value

This specifies the default option argument value to be used when the option is not specified or preset. You may specify multiple arg-default values if the argument type is set membership.


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7.5.7 Option Argument Handling

AutoOpts will either specify or automatically generate callback procedures for options that take specialized arguments. The only option argument types that are not specialized are plain string arguments and no argument at all. For options that fall into one of those two categories, you may specify your own callback function, as specified below. If you do this and if you specify that options are resettable (see section Automatically Supported Options), then your option handling code must look for the OPTST_RESET bit in the fOptState field of the option descriptor.

If the option takes a string argument, then you may specify that the option is to be handled by the libopts library procedures stackOptArg() or unstackOptArg() (see below). In this case, you may not provide option handling code.

Finally, documentation options (see section Option Sectioning Comment) may also be marked as settable (see section Program may set option) and have special callback functions (either flag-code, extract-code, or call-proc).

flag-code

statements to execute when the option is encountered. The generated procedure will look like this:

 
static void
doOpt<name>( tOptions* pOptions, tOptDesc* pOptDesc )
{
<flag-code>
}

Only certain fields within the tOptions and tOptDesc structures may be accessed. See section Data for Option Processing.

extract-code

This is effectively identical to flag-code, except that the source is kept in the output file instead of the definitions file. A long comment is used to demarcate the code. You must not modify that marker. Before regenerating the option code file, the old file is renamed from MUMBLE.c to MUMBLE.c.save. The template will be looking there for the text to copy into the new output file.

call-proc

external procedure to call when option is encountered. The calling sequence must conform to the sequence defined above for the generated procedure, doOpt<name>. It has the same restrictions regarding the fields within the structures passed in as arguments. See section Data for Option Processing.

flag-proc

Name of another option whose flag-code can be executed when this option is encountered.

stack-arg

Call a special library routine to stack the option’s arguments. Special macros in the interface file are provided for determining how many of the options were found (STACKCT_OPT(NAME)) and to obtain a pointer to a list of pointers to the argument values (STACKLST_OPT(NAME)). Obviously, for a stackable argument, the max attribute (see section Common Option Attributes) needs to be set higher than 1.

If this stacked argument option has a disablement prefix, then the entire stack of arguments will be cleared by specifying the option with that disablement prefix.

unstack-arg

Call a special library routine to remove (“unstack”) strings from a stack-arg option stack. This attribute must name the option that is to be “unstacked”. Neither this option nor the stacked argument option it references may be equivalenced to another option.


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7.5.8 Internationalizing Options

Normally, AutoOpts produces usage text that is difficult to translate. It is pieced together on the fly using words and phrases scattered around here and there, piecing together toe document. This does not translate well.

Incorporated into this package are some ways around the problem. First, you should specify the full-usage and short-usage program attributes (see section Program Description Attributes). This will enable your translators to translate the usage text as a whole.

Your translators will also be able to translate long option names. The option name translations will then become the names searched for both on the command line and in configuration files. However, it will not affect the names of environment variable names used to configure your program.

If it is considered desireable to keep configuration files in the “C” locale, then several macros are available to suppress or delay the translations of option names at run time. These are all disabled if ENABLE_NLS is not defined at compile time. These macros must be invoked before the first invocation of optionProcess.

OPT_NO_XLAT_CFG_NAMES;
OPT_XLAT_CFG_NAMES;

Disable (or enable) the translations of option names for configuration files. If you enable translation for config files, then they will be translated for command line options.

OPT_NO_XLAT_OPT_NAMES;
OPT_XLAT_OPT_NAMES;

Disable (or enable) the translations of option names for command line processing. If you disable the translation for command line processing, you will also disable it for configuration file processing. Once translated, the option names will remain translated.


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7.5.9 Man and Info doc Attributes

AutoOpts includes AutoGen templates for producing abbreviated man pages and for producing the invoking section of an info document. To take advantage of these templates, you must add several attributes to your option definitions.

arg-name

If an option has an argument, the argument should have a name for documentation purposes. It will default to arg-type, but it will likely be clearer with something else like, file-name instead of string (the type).

doc

First, every flag definition other than “documentation” definitions, must have a doc attribute defined. If the option takes an argument, then it will need an arg-name attribute as well. The doc text should be in plain sentences with minimal formatting. The Texinfo commands @code, and @var will have its enclosed text made into \fB entries in the man page, and the @file text will be made into \fI entries. The arg-name attribute is used to display the option’s argument in the man page.

Options marked with the “documentation” attribute are for documenting the usage text. All other options should have the “doc” attribute in order to document the usage of the option in the generated man pages.

option-info

This text will be inserted as a lead-in paragraph in the OPTIONS section of the generated man page.

doc-section

This is a compound attribute that requires three subattributes:

ds-type

This describes the section type. Basically, the title of the section that will be added to all output documentation. There may be only one doc-section for any given ds-type. If there are duplicates, the results are undefined (it might work, it might not).

There are five categories of ds-type sections. They are those that the documentation templates would otherwise:

  1. always create itself, ignoring any ds-types by this name. These are marked, below, as ao-only.
  2. create, if none have been provided. These are marked, alternate.
  3. create, but augment if the doc-section was provided. These are marked, augments.
  4. do nothing, but inserts them into the output in a prescribed order. These are marked, known
  5. knows nothing about them. They will be alphabetized and inserted after the list of leading sections and before the list of trailing sections. These are not marked because I don’t know their names.

Some of these are emitted by the documentation templates only if certain conditions are met. If there are conditions, they are explained below. If there are no conditions, then you will always see the named section in the output.

The output sections will appear in this order:

NAME

ao-only.

SYNOPSIS

alternate.

DESCRIPTION

augments.

OPTIONS

ao-only.

OPTION PRESETS

ao-only, if environment presets or configuration file processing has been specified.

unknown

At this point, the unknown, alphabetized sections are inserted.

IMPLEMENTATION NOTES

known

ENVIRONMENT

augments, if environment presets have been specified.

FILES

augments, if configuration file processing has been specified.

EXAMPLES

known

EXIT STATUS

augments.

ERRORS

known

COMPATIBILITY

known

SEE ALSO

known

CONFORMING TO

known

HISTORY

known

AUTHORS

alternate, if the copyright stanza has either an author or an owner attribute.

COPYRIGHT

alternate, if there is a copyright stanza.

BUGS

augments, if the copyright stanza has an eaddr attribute.

NOTES

augments.

ds-format

This describes the format of the associated ds-text section. man, mdoc and texi formats are supported. Regardless of the chosen format, the formatting tags in the output text will be converted to man macros for man pages, mdoc macros for mdoc pages, and texi macros for texinfo pages.

ds-text

This is the descriptive text, written according to the rules for ds-format documents.

Here is an example of a “doc-section” for a “SEE ALSO” type.

 
doc-section = {
  ds-type   = 'SEE ALSO'; // or anything else
  ds-format = 'man';      // or texi or mdoc format
  ds-text   = <<-_EOText_
	text relevant to this section type,
	in the chosen format
	_EOText_;
};
prog-man-descrip
prog-info-descrip

These attributes are now deprecated. Please use a doc-section stanza with a ds-type attribute set to DESCRIPTION instead.

detail

This attribute is used to add a very short explanation about what a program is used for when the “title” attribute is insufficient. If there is no “doc-section” stanza of type “DESCRIPTION”, then this text is used for the man page DESCRIPTION section, too.


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7.5.10 Automatically Supported Options

AutoOpts provides automated support for several options. help and more-help are always provided. The others are conditional upon various global program attributes being defined See section Program Description Attributes.

Below are the option names and default flag values. The flags are activated if and only if at least one user-defined option also uses a flag value. The long names are supported as option names if long-opts has been specified. These option flags may be deleted or changed to characters of your choosing by specifying xxx-value = "y";, where xxx is one of the option names below and y is either empty or the character of your choice. For example, to change the help flag from ? to h, specify help-value = "h";; and to require that save-opts be specified only with its long option name, specify save-opts-value = "";.

With the exception of the load-opts option, none of these automatically supported options will be recognized in configuration files or environment variables.

help -?

This option will immediately invoke the USAGE() procedure and display the usage line, a description of each option with its description and option usage information. This is followed by the contents of the definition of the detail text macro.

more-help -!

This option is identical to the help option, except that the output is passed through a pager program. (more by default, or the program identified by the PAGER environment variable.)

usage -u

This option must be requested by specifying, usage-opt in the option definition file. It will produce abbreviated help text to ‘stdout’ and exit with zero status (EXIT_SUCCESS).

version -v

This will print the program name, title and version. If it is followed by the letter c and a value for copyright and owner have been provided, then the copyright will be printed, too. If it is followed by the letter n, then the full copyright notice (if available) will be printed. The version attribute must be specified in the option definition file.

load-opts -<

This option will load options from the named file. They will be treated exactly as if they were loaded from the normally found configuration files, but will not be loaded until the option is actually processed. This can also be used within another configuration file, causing them to nest. This is the only automatically supported option that can be activated inside of config files or with environment variables.

Specifying the negated form of the option (--no-load-opts) will suppress the processing of configuration files and environment variables.

This option is activated by specifying one or more homerc attributes.

save-opts ->

This option will cause the option state to be printed in the configuration file format when option processing is done but not yet verified for consistency. The program will terminate successfully without running when this has completed. Note that for most shells you will have to quote or escape the flag character to restrict special meanings to the shell.

The output file will be the configuration file name (default or provided by rcfile) in the last directory named in a homerc definition.

This option may be set from within your program by invoking the "SET_OPT_SAVE_OPTS(filename)" macro (see section SET_OPT_name - Force an option to be set). Invoking this macro will set the file name for saving the option processing state, but the state will not actually be saved. You must call optionSaveFile to do that (see section optionSaveFile). CAVEAT: if, after invoking this macro, you call optionProcess, the option processing state will be saved to this file and optionProcess will not return. You may wish to invoke CLEAR_OPT( SAVE_OPTS ) (see section CLEAR_OPT( <NAME> ) - Clear Option Markings) beforehand if you do need to reinvoke optionProcess.

This option is activated by specifying one or more homerc attributes.

reset-option -R

This option takes the name of an option for the current program and resets its state such that it is set back to its original, compile-time initialized value. If the option state is subsequently stored (via --save-opts), the named option will not appear in that file.

This option is activated by specifying the resettable attribute.

BEWARE: If the resettable attribute is specified, all option callbacks must look for the OPTST_RESET bit in the fOptState field of the option descriptor. If set, the optCookie and optArg fields will be unchanged from their last setting. When the callback returns, these fields will be set to their original values. If you use this feature and you have allocated data hanging off of the cookie, you need to deallocate it.


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7.5.11 Library of Standard Options

AutoOpts has developed a set of standardized options. You may incorporate these options in your program simply by first adding a #define for the options you want, and then the line,

 
#include stdoptions.def

in your option definitions. The supported options are specified thus:

 
#define DEBUG
#define DIRECTORY
#define DRY_RUN
#define INPUT
#define INTERACTIVE
#define OUTPUT
#define WARN

#define SILENT
#define QUIET
#define BRIEF
#define VERBOSE

By default, only the long form of the option will be available. To specify the short (flag) form, suffix these names with _FLAG. e.g.,

 
#define DEBUG_FLAG

--silent, --quiet, --brief and --verbose are related in that they all indicate some level of diagnostic output. These options are all designed to conflict with each other. Instead of four different options, however, several levels can be incorporated by #define-ing VERBOSE_ENUM. In conjunction with VERBOSE, it incorporates the notion of 5 levels in an enumeration: silent, quiet, brief, informative and verbose; with the default being brief.

Here is an example program that uses the following set of definitions:

 
AutoGen Definitions options;

prog-name  = default-test;
prog-title = 'Default Option Example';
homerc     = '$$/../share/default-test', '$HOME', '.';
environrc;
long-opts;
gnu-usage;
usage-opt;
version    = '1.0';
main = {
  main-type = shell-process;
};
#define DEBUG_FLAG
#define WARN_FLAG
#define WARN_LEVEL
#define VERBOSE_FLAG
#define VERBOSE_ENUM
#define DRY_RUN_FLAG
#define OUTPUT_FLAG
#define INPUT_FLAG
#define DIRECTORY_FLAG
#define INTERACTIVE_FLAG
#include stdoptions.def

Running a few simple commands on that definition file:

 
autogen default-test.def
copts="-DTEST_DEFAULT_TEST_OPTS `autoopts-config cflags`"
lopts="`autoopts-config ldflags`"
cc -o default-test ${copts} default-test.c ${lopts}

Yields a program which, when run with ‘--help’, prints out:

 
default-test - Default Option Example - Ver. 1.0
USAGE:  default-test [ -<flag> [<val>] | --<name>[{=| }<val>] ]...


The following options are commonly used and are provided and supported
by AutoOpts:

   -D, --debug                run program with debugging info
   -V, --verbose=KWd          run program with progress info
   -w, --warn=num             specify a warning-level threshhold
                                - disabled as --no-warn
   -R, --dry-run              program will make no changes
   -I, --interactive=str      prompt for confirmation
   -i, --input=str            redirect input from file
   -o, --output=str           redirect output to file
   -d, --directory=str        use specified dir for I/O

version and help options:

   -v, --version[=arg]        Output version information and exit
   -?, --help                 Display extended usage information and exit
   -!, --more-help            Extended usage information passed thru pager
   -u, --usage                Abbreviated usage to stdout
   ->, --save-opts[=arg]      Save the option state to a config file
   -<, --load-opts=str        Load options from a config file
                                - disabled as --no-load-opts
                                - may appear multiple times

Options are specified by doubled hyphens and their name or by a single
hyphen and the flag character.

The following option preset mechanisms are supported:
 - reading file $$/../share/default-test
 - reading file $HOME/.default_testrc
 - reading file ./.default_testrc
 - examining environment variables named DEFAULT_TEST_*

The valid "verbose" option keywords are:
  silent quiet brief informative verbose
  or an integer from 0 through 4

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7.6 Programmatic Interface

The user interface for access to the argument information is completely defined in the generated header file and in the portions of the distributed file "options.h" that are marked "public".

In the following macros, text marked <NAME> or name is the name of the option in upper case and segmented with underscores _. The macros and enumerations defined in the options header (interface) file are used as follows:

To see how these #define macros are used in a program, the reader is referred to the several ‘opts.h’ files included with the AutoGen sources.


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7.6.1 Data for Option Processing

This section describes the data that may be accessed from within the option processing callback routines. The following fields may be used in the following ways and may be used for read only. The first set is addressed from the tOptDesc* pointer:

optIndex
optValue

These may be used by option procedures to determine which option they are working on (in case they handle several options).

optActualIndex
optActualValue

These may be used by option procedures to determine which option was used to set the current option. This may be different from the above if the options are members of an equivalence class.

optOccCt

If AutoOpts is processing command line arguments, then this value will contain the current occurrence count. During the option preset phase (reading configuration files and examining environment variables), the value is zero.

fOptState

The field may be tested for the following bit values (prefix each name with OPTST_, e.g. OPTST_INIT):

INIT

Initial compiled value. As a bit test, it will always yield FALSE.

SET

The option was set via the SET_OPT() macro.

PRESET

The option was set via a configuration file.

DEFINED

The option was set via a command line option.

SET_MASK

This is a mask of flags that show the set state, one of the above four values.

EQUIVALENCE

This bit is set when the option was selected by an equivalenced option.

DISABLED

This bit is set if the option is to be disabled. (Meaning it was a long option prefixed by the disablement prefix, or the option has not been specified yet and initializes as disabled.)

As an example of how this might be used, in AutoGen I want to allow template writers to specify that the template output can be left in a writable or read-only state. To support this, there is a Guile function named set-writable (see section set-writable’ - Make the output file be writable). Also, I provide for command options --writable and --not-writable. I give precedence to command line and RC file options, thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( WRITABLE )) {
case OPTST_DEFINED:
case OPTST_PRESET:
    fprintf(stderr, zOverrideWarn, pCurTemplate->pzFileName,
            pCurMacro->lineNo);
    break;

default:
    if (gh_boolean_p( set ) && (set == SCM_BOOL_F))
        CLEAR_OPT( WRITABLE );
    else
        SET_OPT_WRITABLE;
}
pzLastArg

Pointer to the latest argument string. BEWARE If the argument type is numeric, an enumeration or a bit mask, then this will be the argument value and not a pointer to a string.

The following two fields are addressed from the tOptions* pointer:

pzProgName

Points to a NUL-terminated string containing the current program name, as retrieved from the argument vector.

pzProgPath

Points to a NUL-terminated string containing the full path of the current program, as retrieved from the argument vector. (If available on your system.)

Note these fields get filled in during the first call to optionProcess(). All other fields are private, for the exclusive use of AutoOpts code and are subject to change.


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7.6.2 CLEAR_OPT( <NAME> ) - Clear Option Markings

Make as if the option had never been specified. HAVE_OPT(<NAME>) will yield FALSE after invoking this macro.


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7.6.3 COUNT_OPT( <NAME> ) - Definition Count

This macro will tell you how many times the option was specified on the command line. It does not include counts of preset options.

 
if (COUNT_OPT( NAME ) != desired-count) {
    make-an-undesirable-message.
}

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7.6.4 DESC( <NAME> ) - Option Descriptor

This macro is used internally by other AutoOpt macros. It is not for general use. It is used to obtain the option description corresponding to its UPPER CASED option name argument. This is primarily used in other macro definitions.


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7.6.5 DISABLE_OPT_name - Disable an option

This macro is emitted if it is both settable and it can be disabled. If it cannot be disabled, it may always be CLEAR-ed (see above).

The form of the macro will actually depend on whether the option is equivalenced to another, and/or has an assigned handler procedure. Unlike the SET_OPT macro, this macro does not allow an option argument.

 
DISABLE_OPT_NAME;

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7.6.6 ENABLED_OPT( <NAME> ) - Is Option Enabled?

Yields true if the option defaults to disabled and ISUNUSED_OPT() would yield true. It also yields true if the option has been specified with a disablement prefix, disablement value or the DISABLE_OPT_NAME macro was invoked.


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7.6.7 ERRSKIP_OPTERR - Ignore Option Errors

When it is necessary to continue (return to caller) on option errors, invoke this option. It is reversible. See section ERRSTOP_OPTERR - Stop on Errors.


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7.6.8 ERRSTOP_OPTERR - Stop on Errors

After invoking this macro, if optionProcess() encounters an error, it will call exit(1) rather than return. This is the default processing mode. It can be overridden by specifying allow-errors in the definitions file, or invoking the macro See section ERRSKIP_OPTERR - Ignore Option Errors.


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7.6.9 HAVE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Have this option?

This macro yields true if the option has been specified in any fashion at all. It is used thus:

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    <do-things-associated-with-opt-name>;
}

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7.6.10 ISSEL_OPT( <NAME> ) - Is Option Selected?

This macro yields true if the option has been specified either on the command line or via a SET/DISABLE macro.


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7.6.11 ISUNUSED_OPT( <NAME> ) - Never Specified?

This macro yields true if the option has never been specified, or has been cleared via the CLEAR_OPT() macro.


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7.6.12 OPTION_CT - Full Count of Options

The full count of all options, both those defined and those generated automatically by AutoOpts. This is primarily used to initialize the program option descriptor structure.


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7.6.13 OPT_ARG( <NAME> ) - Option Argument String

The option argument value as a pointer to string. Note that argument values that have been specified as numbers are stored as numbers or keywords. For such options, use instead the OPT_VALUE_name define. It is used thus:

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    char* p = OPT_ARG( NAME );
    <do-things-with-opt-name-argument-string>;
}

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7.6.14 OPT_NO_XLAT_CFG_NAMES - option name xlation

Invoking this macro will disable the translation of option names only while processing configuration files and environment variables. This must be invoked before the first call to optionProcess.. You need not invoke this if your option definition file contains the attribute assignment, “no-xlate = opt-cfg;”.


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7.6.15 OPT_NO_XLAT_OPT_NAMES - option name xlation

Invoking this macro will completely disable the translation of option names. This must be invoked before the first call to optionProcess. You need not invoke this if your option definition file contains the attribute assignment, “no-xlate = opt;”.


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7.6.16 OPT_VALUE_name - Option Argument Value

This macro gets emitted only for options that take numeric, keyword or set membership arguments. The macro yields a word-sized integer containing the enumeration, bit set or numeric value for the option argument.

 
int opt_val = OPT_VALUE_name;

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7.6.17 OPT_XLAT_CFG_NAMES - option name xlation

If ENABLE_NLS is defined, this macro will cause the translation of option names to happen before starting the processing of configuration files and environment variables. This will change the recognition of options within the $PROGRAMNAME environment variable, but will not alter the names used for setting options via $PROGRAMNAME_name environment variables.

This must be invoked before the first call to optionProcess. You might need to use this macro if your option definition file contains the attribute assignment, “no-xlate = opt;” or “no-xlate = opt-cfg;”, and you have determined in some way that you wish to override that.


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7.6.18 OPT_XLAT_OPT_NAMES - option name xlation

If ENABLE_NLS is defined, translate the option names before processing the command line options. Long option names may thus be localized. (If the names were translated before configuration processing, they will not be re-translated.)

This must be invoked before the first call to optionProcess. You might need to use this macro if your option definition file contains the attribute assignment, “no-xlate = opt;” and you have determined in some way that you wish to override that.


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7.6.19 RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing

If option processing has stopped (either because of an error or something was encountered that looked like a program argument), it can be resumed by providing this macro with the index n of the next option to process and calling optionProcess() again.


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7.6.20 SET_OPT_name - Force an option to be set

This macro gets emitted only when the given option has the settable attribute specified.

The form of the macro will actually depend on whether the option is equivalenced to another, has an option argument and/or has an assigned handler procedure. If the option has an argument, then this macro will too. Beware that the argument is not reallocated, so the value must not be on the stack or deallocated in any other way for as long as the value might get referenced.

If you have supplied at least one ‘homerc’ file (see section Program Description Attributes), this macro will be emitted for the --save-opts option.

 
SET_OPT_SAVE_OPTS( "filename" );

See section Automatically Supported Options, for a discussion of the implications of using this particular example.


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7.6.21 STACKCT_OPT( <NAME> ) - Stacked Arg Count

When the option handling attribute is specified as stack_arg, this macro may be used to determine how many of them actually got stacked.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<NAME>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

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7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

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7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


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7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

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7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


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7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

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7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


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7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

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7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

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7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


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7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

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7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


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7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

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7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


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7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

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7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

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7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


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7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

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7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


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7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

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7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


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7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

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7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

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7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

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7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ]

7.6.22 STACKLST_OPT( <NAME> ) - Argument Stack

The address of the list of pointers to the option arguments. The pointers are ordered by the order in which they were encountered in the option presets and command line processing.

Do not use this on options that have not been stacked or has not been specified (the stack_arg attribute must have been specified, and HAVE_OPT(<OPTION>) must yield TRUE). Otherwise, you will likely seg fault.

 
if (HAVE_OPT( NAME )) {
    int     ct = STACKCT_OPT(  NAME );
    char**  pp = STACKLST_OPT( NAME );

    do  {
        char* p = *pp++;
        do-things-with-p;
    } while (--ct > 0);
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.23 START_OPT - Restart Option Processing

This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.24 STATE_OPT( <NAME> ) - Option State

If you need to know if an option was set because of presetting actions (configuration file processing or environment variables), versus a command line entry versus one of the SET/DISABLE macros, then use this macro. It will yield one of four values: OPTST_INIT, OPTST_SET, OPTST_PRESET or OPTST_DEFINED. It is used thus:

 
switch (STATE_OPT( NAME )) {
    case OPTST_INIT:
        not-preset, set or on the command line.  (unless CLEAR-ed)

    case OPTST_SET:
        option set via the SET_OPT_NAME() macro.

    case OPTST_PRESET:
        option set via an configuration file or environment variable

    case OPTST_DEFINED:
        option set via a command line option.

    default:
        cannot happen :)
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.25 USAGE( exit-code ) - Usage invocation macro

This macro invokes the procedure registered to display the usage text. Normally, this will be optionUsage from the AutoOpts library, but you may select another procedure by specifying usage = "proc_name" program attribute. This procedure must take two arguments first, a pointer to the option descriptor, and second the exit code. The macro supplies the option descriptor automatically. This routine is expected to call exit(3) with the provided exit code.

The optionUsage routine also behaves differently depending on the exit code:

EXIT_SUCCESS (the value zero)

It is assumed that full usage help has been requested. Consequently, more information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting with a non-zero exit code. Output will be sent to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code.

EX_USAGE (64)

The abbreviated usage will be printed to ‘stdout’ and the program will exit with a zero status code. “EX_USAGE” may or may not be 64. If your system provides “/usr/include/sysexits.h” that has a different value, then that value will be used.

any other value

The abbreviated usage will be printed to stderr and the program will exit with the provided status code.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.26 VALUE_OPT_name - Option Flag Value

This is a #define for the flag character used to specify an option on the command line. If value was not specified for the option, then it is a unique number associated with the option. option value refers to this value, option argument refers to the (optional) argument to the option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.27 VERSION - Version and Full Version

If the version attribute is defined for the program, then a stringified version will be #defined as PROGRAM_VERSION and PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION. PROGRAM_FULL_VERSION is used for printing the program version in response to the version option. The version option is automatically supplied in response to this attribute, too.

You may access PROGRAM_VERSION via programOptions.pzFullVersion.


[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.28 WHICH_IDX_name - Which Equivalenced Index

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the index for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_IDX_OTHER_OPT) {
case INDEX_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case INDEX_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

[ < ] [ > ]   [ << ] [ Up ] [ >> ]         [Top] [Contents] [Index] [ ? ]

7.6.29 WHICH_OPT_name - Which Equivalenced Option

This macro gets emitted only for equivalenced-to options. It is used to obtain the value code for the one of the several equivalence class members set the equivalenced-to option.

 
switch (WHICH_OPT_OTHER_OPT) {
case VALUE_OPT_NAME:
    this-option-was-really-opt-name;
case VALUE_OPT_OTHER_OPT:
    this-option-was-really-other-opt;
}

<