optionProcess (3) - Linux Manuals

optionProcess: this is the main option processing routine

NAME

optionProcess - this is the main option processing routine

SYNOPSIS

#include <your-opts.h>
cc [...] -o outfile infile.c -lopts [...]

int optionProcess(tOptions* opts, int a_ct, char** a_v);

DESCRIPTION

This is the main entry point for processing options. It is intended that this procedure be called once at the beginning of the execution of a program. Depending on options selected earlier, it is sometimes necessary to stop and restart option processing, or to select completely different sets of options. This can be done easily, but you generally do not want to do this.

The number of arguments processed always includes the program name. If one of the arguments is "--", then it is counted and the processing stops. If an error was encountered and errors are to be tolerated, then the returned value is the index of the argument causing the error. A hyphen by itself ("-") will also cause processing to stop and will not be counted among the processed arguments. A hyphen by itself is treated as an operand. Encountering an operand stops option processing.

opts

program options descriptor

a_ct

program arg count

a_v

program arg vector

RETURN VALUE

the count of the arguments processed

ERRORS

Errors will cause diagnostics to be printed. exit(3) may or may not be called. It depends upon whether or not the options were generated with the "allow-errors" attribute, or if the ERRSKIP_OPTERR or ERRSTOP_OPTERR macros were invoked.