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AutoOpts 12.0 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 initialization file options, and the documentation that should go with your program as well.
AutoOpts is distributed under The GNU General Public License with the Library extentions (LGPL). It is in no way a "lesser" license. You have greater license with it.
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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 8.4 Option Definitions section.
dis-abled with a disablement prefix.
Such options may default to either an enabled or a disabled state. You
may also provide an enablement prifix, too, e.g., --allow-mumble
and --prevent-mumble.
--help and --version are automatically supported.
--more-help will page the generated help.
main() routines can take advantage of all of AutoOpts' functionality.
test-main is defined, the output `.c' file will contain a
main routine that will be compiled when TEST_<prog-name>_OPTS is
defined. See section 8.8 AutoOpts for Shell Scripts. If you choose to compile this program,
it is currently capable of producing one of three results:
test-main may specify a routine that will be called with a
pointer to the option descriptions as the single argument. You must
supply this routine and, obviously, you can cause it to do whatever you
wish it to do.
Explanatory details:
loading rc files saving rc files process a text string for options
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homerc (see section 8.4.1 Program Description Attributes). The initialization values
are identified by the long option name followed by white space and any
associated value. The value, if any, will continue through the end of
the last line not continued with a backslash. Leading and trailing
white space is stripped.
Initialization files are selected both by the homerc entries and,
optionally, via an automatically supplied command line option. The
first component of the homerc entry may be an environment
variable such as $HOME, or it may also be $$ (two
dollar sign characters) to specify the directory of the executable.
For example:
homerc = "$$/../share/autogen"; |
will cause the AutoOpts library to look in the normal autogen datadir for an initialization file.
The initialization files are processed in the order they are specified
by the homerc attribute, so that each new file will normally
override the settings of the previous files. A few options may be
marked for immediate action (see section 8.4.2.4 Immediate Action Attributes). Any such
options are acted upon in reverse order. The disabled
load-opts (--no-load-opts) option, for example, is an
immediate action option. Its presence in the last homerc file
will prevent the processing of any prior homerc files.
Further initialization file processing can be suppressed by
specifying --no-load-opts on the command line, or
PROGRAM_LOAD_OPTS=no in the environment, or no-load-opts
in any of the specified homerc files.
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--save-opts option.
All of the known option state will be written to either the specified
output file or, if it is not specified, then to the last specified
homerc file.
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The optionLoadLine takes two arguments:
Leading and trailing white space is trimmed from the value, but otherwise new lines are not discarded. The caller is expected to have NUL terminated the string at the correct point.
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Here is a feature comparison of AutoOpts and six other command line parser generators. Nearly all of them share these characteristics:
The 7 parsers compared are:
getopts_long()
to parse the command line options.
| Feature \ Package # | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| shell script app | YES | no | no | no | no | no | no |
| Scheme app | YES | no | no | no | no | no | no |
| Perl app | no | no | no | no | no | YES | no |
| config file input | yes | no | no | yes | no | yes | yes |
| environment input | YES | no | no | no | no | YES | no |
| config file output | YES | no | no | no | no | no | no |
| callback functions | yes | NO | yes | yes | yes | yes | NO |
| multiple occurrence | YES | YES | no | no | no | no | no |
| parameter types | [1] | 4 | 5 | 5 | 11 | [3] | 4 |
| enumeration opts | YES | no | no | no | no | no | no |
| optional argument | YES | YES | no | no | no | no | no |
| default values | yes | yes | yes | yes | NO | yes | yes |
| interactive | no | no | no | no | no | YES | no |
| range checks | yes | yes | yes | no | no | no | no |
| consistency checks | YES | no | no | no | no | no | no |
| standard opts | YES | no | no | no | no | no | no |
| man page | YES | YES | no | no | no | no | no |
| texinfo invoking | YES | no | no | no | no | no | no |
| developer dependencies | Guile | tcl | none | none | none | none | bison,flex |
| user dependencies | [2] | none | none | none | none | none | none |
"multiple occurrence" options may appear multiple times on the command line. Some of the parsers constrain options to appearing once only.
"optional argument" refers to the argument to an option. POSIX and most command line parsers require an option to either not have an argument or else the argument must be supplied on the command line. GNU's getopt_long and some of these parsers support the notion of letting the option argument be "optional".
"consistency checks" verify that conflicting options do not appear together, and options that require other options are allowed only if those other options are present.
"standard options" are pre-defined options that can be trivially incorporated into a user's set of options. They can also thereby be used for standardizing on the flag character and option name.
"interactive" means that the option processing package is able to interactively query the user for option state.
[1] See the list of features, 8.4.2.6 Option Argument Specification.
[2] There is a user-visible dependency iff the developer does a dynamic link to the libopts.so library. Developers are free to either link statically or ship libopts.so with their product. A Debian package would need only a dependency on the package supplying libopts (libopts11, at present). The Guile library is now generally pre-installed on all GNU/Linux systems.
[3] opt supports a different argument type for each fundamental
type, plus booleans, inverted booleans, toggling options and a couple
others.
-- James R. Van Zandt
-- Bruce Korb
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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:
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.
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;
test_main;
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-' */
};
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Then perform the following steps:
autogen -L $prefix/share/autogen checkopt.def
cc -o check -DTEST_CHECK_OPTS -g checkopt.c -L $prefix/lib -lopts
And now, ./check --help yields:
check - Checkout Automated Options
USAGE: check [-<flag> [<val>]]... [--<name>[{=| }<val>]]...
Flg Arg Option-Name Description
-L YES check-dirs Checkout directory list
- may appear without limit
no show-defs Show the definition tree
- disabled as --dont-show-defs
-? no help Display usage information and exit
-! no more-help Extended usage information passed thru pager
Options may be specified by doubled markers and their name
or by a single marker and the flag character/option value.
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Normally, however, you would compile `checkopt.c' as in:
cc -o checkopt.o -I$prefix/include -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:
main( int argc, char** argv )
{
{
int optct = optionProcess( &checkOptions, argc, argv );
argc -= optct;
argv += optct;
}
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The options are tested and used as in the following fragment:
if (HAVE_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++;
...
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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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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 8.3 Quick Start) and paying attention to the following:
prog-name, prog-title, and argument, program
attributes, See section 8.4.1 Program Description Attributes.
name and descrip option attributes, See section 8.4.2.1 Required Attributes.
value (flag character) and min (occurrence counts)
option attributes, See section 8.4.2.2 Common Option Attributes.
arg-type from the option argument specification section,
See section 8.4.2.6 Option Argument Specification.
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.
8.4.1 Program Description Attributes 8.4.2 Option Attributes 8.4.3 Man and Info doc Attributes 8.4.4 Automatically Supported Options 8.4.5 Library of Standard Options
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The following global option definitions are used to define attributes of the entire program. The first two are required of every program. The rest have been alphabetized. Except as noted, there may be only one copy of each of these definitions:
string->c_name! (see section 3.5.46 `string->c-name!' - map non-name chars to underscore).
settable. The library client program will invoke the
SET_OPTION macro which will invoke a handler function that will
finally set these global variables.
ERRSKIP_OPTERR and ERRSTOP_OPTERR from the
generated interface file.
[), then there is no requirement on the presence or
absence of command line argument 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.
guile-main has been specified and if this is specified
as well, then this code will be inserted into the actual main()
procedure before gh_enter() is called.
copyright is a structured value containing three to five
values. If copyright is used, then the first three are required.
copyright = {
date = "1992-2001";
owner = "Bruce Korb";
eaddr = '[email protected]';
type = GPL;
};
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PROGRAM is the upper cased C-name of the program and
OPTNAME is the upper cased C-name of the option. The
C-names are the regular names with all special characters
converted to underscores (_).
If a particular option may be disabled, then its disabled state
is indicated by setting the value to the disablement prefix.
So, for example, if the disablement prefix were dont, then
you can disable the optname option by setting the
PROGRAM_OPTNAME environment variable to `dont'.
See section 8.4.2.2 Common Option Attributes.
#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, below.
optionProcess() and will
invoke any code specified by this attribute. If this attribute
does not specify any code, then calls to the AutoOpts library procedure
export_options_to_guile() and then scm_shell() will
be inserted into inner_main().
.
or `/usr/local/share/progname') or an environment variable (like
`$HOME/rc/' or `$PREFIX/share/progname') or the directory
where the executable was found (`$$[/...]') to use to try to find
the rcfile. Use as many as you like. The presence of this attribute
activates the --save-opts and --load-opts options.
See section loading rc files.
flag_code program text.
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:
- and -- are completely optional.
argument program attribute is disallowed.
homerc attribute.
default: .<prog-name>rc
Every RC file will be considered partitioned by lines that commence with
the square open bracket ([). All text before such a line is
always processed. Once such a line is found, the upper-cased
c-variable-syntax program name will be compared against the text
following that bracket. If there is a match and the next character
after that is a square close bracket (]), then the section is
processed and the file closed. Otherwise, the section is ignored and a
matching section is searched for.
For exampe, if the foo-bar options had a sectioned RC file,
then a line containing [FOO_BAR] would be searched for.
test-main is short (3 or fewer characters), the
generated main() will call putBourneShell. That routine will emit
Bourne shell commands that can be eval-ed by a Bourne-derived shell to
incorporate the digested options into the shell's environment,
See section 8.8 AutoOpts for Shell Scripts. You would use it thus:
eval `./programopts $@`
if [ -z "${OPTION_CT}" ] ; then exit 1 ; fi
shift ${OPTION_CT}
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test-main contains putShellParse, the
program will generate portable Bourne shell commands that will parse the
command line options. The expectation is that this result will be
copied into a shell script and used there, See section 8.8 AutoOpts for Shell Scripts.
optionUsage() does not work for you. If you specify
gnu_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.
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For each option you wish to specify, you must have a block macro named
flag defined. It MUST contain at least two defined text
values named name and descrip. If any options do not have a
value macro, then the long-opts global text macro must 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. In this case, the
- and -- command line option markers are optional.
There are four categories of option attributes. The fifth section below describes what data are available for writing option processing code.
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Every option must have exactly one copy of both of these attributes.
usage() output next to the option name.
Documentation options appear on one or more lines by themselves,
visually separating the usage options.
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These option attributes are optional. Any that do appear in the definition of a flag, may appear only once.
-L.
mumble that is indicated
with the compile time define, WITH_MUMBLING, then add:
ifdef = WITH_MUMBLING; |
Note that case and spelling must match whatever you are using. Do not confuse these attributes with the AutoGen directives of the same names, See section 2.4 Controlling What Gets Processed. These cause C pre-processing directives to be inserted into the generated C text.
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These option attributes do not fit well with other categories.
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.
For an option equivalence class, there is a single occurrence counter for all the members of the class. All members of the equivalence class must contain the same equivalenced-to option, including the equivalenced-to option itself. Thus, it must be a member.
As an example, 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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If present, this option disables all other attributes except
settable, call_proc and flag_code. settable
must be and is only specified if call_proc 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.
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Certain options may need to be processed early. For example, in order
to suppress the processing of RC files, it is necessary to process the
command line option --no-load-opts before the RC 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 RC 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.
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 :-).
load-opts option is
so specified. The --no-load-opts command line option will
suppress the processing of RC 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.
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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.
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Several attributes relate to the handling of arguments to options.
Each may appear only once, except for the arg-range attribute.
It may appear as often as may be needed.
arg-range section below for some considerations.
AutoOpts contains a library procedure to convert the string to a number.
If you specify range checking with arg-range, then AutoOpts
produces a special purpose procedure for this option.
f, F, n or N
(representing False or No). Anything else will be interpreted as True.
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 */ ;
}
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AutoOpts produces a special purpose procedure for this option.
arg-type is keyword, then you must specify the
list of keywords by a series of keyword entries. The interface
file will contain an enumeration of <OPTN_NAME>_<KEYWORD> for
each keyword entry.
string or keyword. If it is keyword, then
this attribute may also specify the default keyword to assume when
the argument is not supplied. Without such a specification, the
default keyword will be the zero-valued keyword.
arg-type
specified, but not the arg-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.
arg-type is number, then arg-ranges may be
specified, too. If you specify one or more of these option attributes,
then AutoOpts will create a callback procedure for handling it. The
argument value supplied for the option 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, ->.
The generated procedure imposes some constraints:
INT_MIN,
both for obvious reasons and because
that value is used to indicate a single-valued match.
The usage procedure displays these ranges by calling the callback
with the pOptDesc pointer set to NULL. Therefore,
all callback procedures designed to handle options with numeric
arguments must be prepared to handle a call with that
pointer set NULL.
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AutoOpts will automatically generate a callback procedure for options with enumerated keyword arguments and numeric arguments with range checking. If you have specified such an option, you may not specify any of the attributes listed here.
Otherwise, you may pick zero or one of the following attributes.
The first two attributes interact with the documentation and
settable attributes, See section 8.4.2.3 Special Option Handling.
static void
doOpt<name>( tOptions* pOptions, tOptDesc* pOptDesc )
{
<flag_code>
}
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Only certain fields within the tOptions and tOptDesc
structures may be accessed. See section 8.5.1 Data for Option Processing.
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.
doOpt<name>. It has the same restrictions
regarding the fields within the structures passed in as arguments.
See section 8.5.1 Data for Option Processing.
flag_code can be executed
when this option is encountered.
STACKCT_OPT(NAME)) and to obtain a
pointer to a list of pointers to the argument values
(STACKLST_OPT(NAME)).
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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.
flag definition must have a doc attribute
defined and many 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.
arg-type, but
it will likely be clearer with something else like, file-name
instead of string (the type).
detail definition, this may be sufficient.
If not, or if you need special formatting for one of the manual formats,
then you will need either a definition for prog-man-descrip or
prog-info-descrip or both. These will be inserted verbatim
in the man page document and the info document, respectively.
SEE ALSO or
USAGE or other, put that text in a man-doc definition. This
text will be inserted verbatim in the man page after the OPTIONS
section and before the AUTHOR section.
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AutoOpts provides automated support for five options. help and
more-help are always provided. version is provided if
version is defined in the option definitions. save-opts
and load-opts are provided if at least one homerc is
defined.
Below are the option names and flag values. The flags are activated if
and only if at least one user-defined option also uses a flag value.
These flags may be deleted or changed to characters of your choosing by
specifying xxx-value = "y";, where xxx
is one of the five 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 = "";.
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.
help option, except that
it also includes the contents of the detail-file file
(if provided and found), plus the output is passed through
a pager program. (more by default, or the program identified
by the PAGER environment variable.)
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 output file will be the RC/INI file name (default or provided
by rcfile) in the last directory named in a homerc
definition
It is ultimately intended that specifying the option,
no-load-opts will suppress the processing of rc/ini files and
environment variables. To do this, AutoOpts must first implement
pre-scanning of the options, environment and rc files.
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AutoOpts has developed a set of standardized options.
You may incorporate these options in your program simply by adding
a #define for the options you want, and 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.
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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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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:
OPTST_, e.g. OPTST_INIT):
SET_OPT() macro.
optionLoadLine() routine.
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 3.4.30 `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;
}
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The following two fields are addressed from the tOptions* pointer:
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 is subject to change.
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Make as if the option had never been specified.
HAVE_OPT(<NAME>) will yield FALSE
after invoking this macro.
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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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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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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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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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When it is necessary to continue (return to caller) on option errors, invoke this option. It is reversible. See section 8.5.8 ERRSTOP_OPTERR - Stop on Errors.
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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 8.5.7 ERRSKIP_OPTERR - Ignore Option Errors.
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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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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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This macro yields true if the option has
never been specified, or has been cleared via the
CLEAR_OPT() macro.
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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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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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This macro gets emitted only for options that take numeric or keyword arguments. The macro yields a word-sized integer containing the enumeration or numeric value of the option argument.
int opt_val = OPT_VALUE_NAME; |
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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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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.
SET_OPT_NAME( "string-value" ); |
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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 page 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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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 page 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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This is just a shortcut for RESTART_OPT(1) (See section 8.5.15 RESTART_OPT( n ) - Resume Option Processing.)
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If you need to know if an option was set because of
presetting actions (RC/INI 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 RC/INI file or environment variable
case OPTST_DEFINED:
option set via a command line option.
default:
cannot happen :)
}
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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. If the exit code is zero, it is assumed that
assistance has been requested. Consequently, a little more
information is provided than when displaying usage and exiting
with a non-zero exit code.
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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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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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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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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;
}
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This enum defines the complete set of options, both user specified and automatically provided. This can be used, for example, to distinguish which of the equivalenced options was actually used.
switch (pOptDesc->optActualIndex) {
case INDEX_OPT_FIRST:
stuff;
case INDEX_OPT_DIFFERENT:
different-stuff;
default:
unknown-things;
}
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You will not actually need to reference this value, but you need to be
aware that it is there. It is the first value in the option descriptor
that you pass to optionProcess. It contains a magic number and
version information. Normally, you should be able to work with a more
recent option library than the one you compiled with. However, if the
library is changed incompatibly, then the library will detect the out of
date magic marker, explain the difficulty and exit. You will then need
to rebuild and recompile your option definitions. This has rarely been
necessary.
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These are the publicly exported procedures from the libopts library.
eval "`handle-prog-opts ${1+\"$@\"}`"
[ -z "$OPTION_CT" ] && exit 1
shift $OPTION_CT
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This routine is normally specified by specifying
test-main = yes; in the option definitions file.
test-main = putShellParse; and the result
is compiled with -DTEST_xxx_OPTS defined. This is the
only way it should ever be invoked.
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This is the module that is to be compiled and linked with your program.
It contains internal data and procedures subject to change. Basically,
it contains a single global data structure containing all the
information provided in the option definitions, plus a number of static
strings and any callout procedures that are specified or required. You
should never have need for looking at this, except, perhaps, to examine
the code generated for implementing the flag_code construct.
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To use AutoOpts in your application:
myopts.h)
and the option descriptor code (myopts.c):
autogen -L $prefix/share/autogen myopts.def |
#include "myopts.h".
main( int argc, char** argv )
{
{
int arg_ct = optionProcess( &myprogOptions, argc, argv );
argc -= arg_ct;
if ((argc < ARGC_MIN) || (argc > ARGC_MAX)) {
fprintf( stderr, "%s ERROR: remaining args (%d) "
"out of range\n", myprogOptions.pzProgName,
argc );
USAGE( EXIT_FAILURE );
}
argv += arg_ct;
}
if (HAVE_OPT(OPTN_NAME))
respond_to_optn_name();
...
}
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myopts.o -L $prefix/lib -lopts |
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AutoOpts may be used with shell scripts by automatically creating a complete program that will process command line options and pass back the results to the invoking shell by issuing shell variable assignment commands. It may also be used to generate portable shell code that can be inserted into your script.
The functionality of these features, of course, is somewhat constrained compared with the normal program facilities. Specifically, you cannot invoke callout procedures with either of these methods. Additionally, if you generate a shell script:
Both of these methods are enabled by running AutoGen on the definitions file with the additional global attribute:
test-main [ = proc-to-call ] ; |
If you do not supply a proc-to-call, it will default
to putBourneShell. That will produce a program that
will process the options and generate shell text for the
invoking shell to interpret. If you supply the name,
putShellParse, then you will have a program that
will generate a shell script that can parse the options.
If you supply a different procedure name, you will have to
provide that routine and it may do whatever you like.
In summary, you will need to issue approximately the following two commands to have a working program:
autogen -L <opt-template-dir> program.def
cc -o progopts -L <opt-lib-dir> -I <opt-include-dir> \
-DTEST_program_OPTS program.c -lopts
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The resulting program can be used within your shell script as follows:
eval `./progopts $@`
if [ -z "${OPTION_CT}" ] ; then exit 1 ; fi
shift ${OPTION_CT}
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If you had used "test-main = putShellParse" instead, then you can,
at this point, merely run the program and it will write the parsing
script to standard out. You may also provide this program with command
line options to specify the shell script file to create or edit, and you
may specify the shell program to use on the first shell script line.
That program's usage text would look something like this:
/bin/sh: .tmp/genshellopt: No such file or directory |
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Using the option definitions for an AutoOpt client program, the `aginfo.tpl' template will produce texinfo text that documents the invocation of your program. The text emitted is designed to be included in the full texinfo document for your product. It is not a stand-alone document. The usage text for the 5.1 autogen usage help (-?), 9.5.1 getdefs usage help and 9.4.1 columns usage help (-?) programs, are included in this document and are all generated using this template.
Two files will be produced, a `.texi' file and a `.menu' file. You should include the `.menu' file in your document where you wish to reference the `invoking' chapter, section or subsection. The documentation level is selected by passing a `-DLEVEL=<level-name>' argument to AutoGen when you build the document. (See the example invocation below.)
The `.texi' file will contain an introductory paragraph, a menu and a subordinate section for the invocation usage and for each documented option. The introductory paragraph is normally the boiler plate text:
This chapter documents the @file{AutoOpts} generated usage text
and option meanings for the @file{your-program} program.
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However, if your program's option definitions include a `prog-info-descrip' section, then that is what will be used instead.
These files are produced by invoking the following command:
AutoGen -L ${prefix}/share/autogen -T aginfo.tpl \
-DLEVEL=section your-opts.def
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Where `${prefix}' is the AutoGen installation prefix and `your-opts.def' is the name of your product's option definition file.
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Using the option definitions for an AutoOpt client program, the `agman1.tpl' template will produce an nroff document suitable for use as a `man(1)' page document for a command line command. The description section of the document is either the `prog-man-descrip' text, if present, or the `detail' text.
Each option in the option definitions file is fully documented
in its usage. This includes all the information documented
above for each option (see section 8.4.2 Option Attributes), plus
the `doc' attribute is appended. Since the `doc'
text is presumed to be designed for texinfo documentation,
sed is used to convert some constructs from texi
to nroff-for-man-pages. Specifically,
convert @code, @var and @samp into \fB...\fP phrases convert @file into \fI...\fP phrases Remove the '@' prefix from curly braces Indent example regions Delete the example commands Replace `end example' command with ".br" Replace the `@*' command with ".br" |
This document is produced by invoking the following command:
AutoGen -L ${prefix}/share/autogen -T agman1.tpl options.def
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Where `${prefix}' is the AutoGen installation prefix and `options.def' is the name of your product's option definition file. I do not use this very much, so any feedback or improvements would be greatly appreciated.
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