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I started learning C in university but only for one semester. I'm interested in learning a bit more about the language and started a small command line application.
I want to parse command line arguments. Since every command line application has to deal with this, I wonder if somebody has ever released a library to deal with that. Sure, I could do some decision making with if-else or switch statements, but I think it gets more complicated when I want to accept commands starting with '-' or '--' and also print a list of available commands, including descriptions.
Since I want to make my app for Windows and Linux, I can't use the GNU C Library which is posix-only (but has a helper for command handling).
Is there a nice way to achive tat or do I need to start from scratch?
The getopt will help you to parse the command line argument.
getopt :-
In getopt man page,
Syntax :
int getopt(int argc, char * const argv[], const char *optstring);
The getopt() function parses the command-line arguments. Its arguments argc and argv are the argument count and array as passed to the main() function on program invocation. An element of argv that starts with '-' (and is not exactly "-" or "--") is an option element. The characters of this element (aside from the initial '-') are option characters. If getopt() is called repeatedly, it returns successively each of the option characters from each of the option elements.
Example:-
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int flags, opt;
int nsecs, tfnd;
nsecs = 0;
tfnd = 0;
flags = 0;
while ((opt = getopt(argc, argv, "nt:")) != -1) {
switch (opt) {
case 'n':
flags = 1;
break;
case 't':
nsecs = atoi(optarg);
tfnd = 1;
break;
default: /* '?' */
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s [-t nsecs] [-n] name\n",
argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
}
printf("flags=%d; tfnd=%d; optind=%d\n", flags, tfnd, optind);
if (optind >= argc) {
fprintf(stderr, "Expected argument after options\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("name argument = %s\n", argv[optind]);
/* Other code omitted */
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
Try the link for getopt(3) man page to read more about the getopt function.
Related
I'm writing a simple code making use of *argv[] parameter. I'd like to know whether I can use getopt() function for the following intent.
./myprogram -a PATH
./myprogram PATH
The program can either take merely PATH (e.g. /usr/tmp) or take -a option in addition to PATH. Can getopt() be used for this state? If can, how?
The program can either take merely PATH (e.g. /usr/tmp) or take option in addition to PATH. Can getopt() be used for this state? If can, how?
Certainly. I'm not sure where you even see a potential issue, unless its that you don't appreciate POSIX's and getopt()'s distinction between options and arguments. They are related, but not at all the same thing.
getopt() is fine with the case that no options are in fact specified, and it gives you access to the non-option arguments, such as PATH appears to be for you, regardless of how many options are specified. The usual usage model is to call getopt() in a loop until it returns -1 to indicate that no more options are available from the command line. At each step, the global variable optind variable provides the index of the next argv element to process, and after getopt() (first) returns -1, optind provides the index of the first non-option argument. In your case, that would be where you expect to find PATH.
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
const char options[] = "a";
_Bool have_a = 0;
char *the_path;
int opt;
do {
switch(opt = getopt(argc, argv, options)) {
case -1:
the_path = argv[optind];
// NOTE: the_path will now be null if no path was specified,
// and you can recognize the presence of additional,
// unexpected arguments by comparing optind to argc
break;
case 'a':
have_a = 1;
break;
case '?':
// handle invalid option ...
break;
default:
// should not happen ...
assert(0);
break;
}
} while (opt >= 0);
}
Using an optstring of "a" allows an argument of -a to act as a flag.
optind helps detect that only one additional argument is present.
The program can be executed as ./program -a path or ./program path
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
char op = ' ';//default value
int opt;
while ((opt = getopt(argc, argv, "a")) != -1)//optstring allows for -a argument
{
switch (opt)
{
case 'a':
op = 'a';//found option, set op
break;
default:
fprintf(stderr, "%s: unknown option %c\n", argv[0], optopt);
return 1;
}
}
if ( optind + 1 != argc)//one argument allowed besides optstring values
{
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s [-a] PATH\n", argv[0]);
return 1;
}
printf("%s %c\n", argv[optind], op);
return 0;
}
For a simple C project of a filesystem in a file, I have to make a command for writing the partitions table. It just contains the number of partitions and the size of them, pretty simple.
It should work like mk_part -s size [-s size ...] [name].
[name] is the filename of the disk, it's optionnal because there is a default one provided.
I don't know much getopt_long (and getopt) but all I read is that I while get options in a while so the two way of processing for me would be :
store all the sizes in an array and then write them in the table.
write size directly during parsing
For the first choice the difficulty is that I don't know the number of partitions. But I still could majorate this number by argc or better by (argc-1)/2 and it would work.
For the second choice I don't know which file to write.
So what is the best alternative to get all those arguments and how can I get this optionnal name ?
getopt can handle both repeated and optional args just fine. For repeated args each invocation of getopt will give you the next arg. getopt doesn't care that it is repeated. For the arg at the end, just need to check for its presence once all the options are parsed. Below is code modified from the example in the getopt man page to handle your scenario:
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int opt;
while ((opt = getopt(argc, argv, "s:")) != -1) {
switch (opt) {
case 's':
printf("size=%d\n", atoi(optarg));
break;
default: /* '?' */
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
}
if (optind < argc) {
printf("name=%s\n", argv[optind]);
} else {
printf("optional name arg not present\n");
}
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
And here is some sample runs of the program showing it handling repeated options and the arg at the end.
$ ./a.out -s 10 -s 20 -s 30
size=10
size=20
size=30
optional name arg not present
$ ./a.out -s 1 my_name
size=1
name=my_name
I think you're overthinking this. I know it's always tempting to try to avoid malloc's, but the efficiency of option parsing is never (*) important. You only parse options once, and in the cost of initializing a new process, finding the executable, linking and loading it, and all the rest of the process of starting up a command, the time it takes to parse options is probably not even noise.
So just do it in the simplest way possible. Here's one possible outline:
int main(int argc, char* argv) {
/* These variables describe the options */
int nparts = 0; // Number of partitions
unsigned long* parts = NULL; // Array of partitions (of size nparts)
const char* diskname="/the/default/name"; // Disk's filename
for (;;) {
switch (getopt(argc, argv, "s:")) {
case '?':
/* Print usage message */
exit(1);
case 's':
/* Some error checking missing */
parts = realloc(parts, ++nparts * sizeof *parts);
parts[nparts - 1] = strtoul(optarg, NULL, 0);
continue;
case -1:
break;
}
break;
}
if (optind < argc) diskname = argv[optind++];
if (optind != argc) {
/* print error message */
exit(1);
}
return do_partitions(diskname, parts, nparts);
}
The above code is missing a lot of error checking and other niceties, but it's short and to the point. It simply reallocs the partition array every time a new size is found. (That's probably not as awful as you think it is, because realloc itself is probably clever enough to increase the allocation size exponentially. But even if it were awful, it's not going to happen often enough to even notice.)
The trick with continue and break is a common way of nesting a switch inside a for. In the switch, continue will continue the for loop, while break will break out of the switch; since all the switch actions which do not terminate the for loop continue, whatever follows the switch block is only executed for a switch action which explicitly breaks. So the break following the switch block breaks the for loop in precisely those cases where the switch action did a break.
You might want to check that there was at least one partition size defined before call the function which does the repartitioning.
I am trying to parse command line arguments in C. Currently, I am using getopt do the parse. I have something like this:
#include <unistd.h>
int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
while((c=getopt(argc, argv, "abf:")) != -1)
{
switch(c)
{
case 'a':
break;
case 'b':
break;
case 'f':
puts(optarg);
break;
case ':':
puts("oops");
break;
case '?'
puts("wrong command");
break;
}
}
}
then need to use ./a.out -fto run the program, and -f is the command element, but looks like -f must start with a '-', if I do not want the command element starts with '-', i.e, using ./a.out f instead of ./a.out -f, how to achieve it?
if getopt does not support parsing a command line in this way, are there any other library to use in C?
The argc and argv variables give you access to what you're looking for. argc is "argument count" and argv is "argument vector" (array of strings).
getopt is a very useful and powerful tool, but if you must not start with a dash, you can just access the argument array directly:
int main( int argc, char** argv) {
if( argc != 1) { /* problem! */ }
char * argument = argv[1]; // a.out f ... argv[1] will be "f"
}
You could use (on Linux with GNU libc) for parsing program arguments:
getopt with getopt_long; you might skip some arguments using tricks around optind
argp which is quite powerful
and of course you could parse program arguments manually, since they are given thru main(int argc, char**argv) on Linux (with the guarantee that argc>0, that argv[0] is "the program name" -e.g. to find it in your $PATH when it contains no / ..., that argv[argc] is the NULL pointer, and that before that every argv[i] with i<argc and i>0 is a zero-terminated string. See execve(2) for more.
GNU coding standards: command line interfaces document quite clearly some conventions. Please, obey at least the --help and --version conventions!
You might also be concerned by customizing the shell auto-completion facilities. GNU bash has programmable completion. zsh has a sophisticated completion system.
Remember that on Posix and Linux the globbing of command words is done by the shell before starting your program. See glob(7).
The getopt library will stop parsing at the first non-option argument. For command-based programs, this will be at the command name. You can then set optind to the index to start at and run getopt again with the command-specific arguments.
For example:
// general getopts
if (optind >= argc) return 0; // error -- no command
if (strcmp(argv[optind], "command") == 0)
{
++optind; // move over the command name
// 'command'-specific getopts
if (optind >= argc) return 0; // error -- no input
}
This should allow git-like command-line parsing.
I'm making a program in C in linux environment. Now, program runs with arguments which I supply in the command line.
For example:
./programName -a 45 -b 64
I wanted to handle the case when my command line parameters are wrongly supplied. Say, only 'a' and 'b' are valid parameters and character other than that is wrong. I handled this case. But suppose if my command line parameter is like this:
./programName -a 45 -b
It gives segmentation fault(core dumped). I know why it gives because there is no arguments after b. But how can I handle this situation such that when this condition arrives, I can print an error message on screen and exit my program.
As per the main function wiki page:
The parameters argc, argument count, and argv, argument vector, respectively
So you can use your argc parameter to check whether or not you have the right number of arguments. If you don't have 4, handle it and proceed without segfault.
You can, and quite probably should, use getopt() or its GNU brethren getopt_long().
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
int b = 0;
int a = 0;
int opt;
while ((opt = getopt(argc, argv, "a:b:")) != -1)
{
switch (opt)
{
case 'a':
a = atoi(optarg);
break;
case 'b':
b = atoi(optarg);
break;
default:
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s -a num -b num\n", argv[0]);
exit(1);
}
}
if (a == 0 || b == 0)
{
fprintf(stderr, "%s: you did not provide non-zero values for both -a and -b options\n", argv[0]);
exit(1);
}
printf("a = %d, b = %d, sum = %d\n", a, b, a + b);
return(0);
}
You can make the error detection more clever as you wish, not allowing repeats, spotting extra arguments, allowing zeros through, etc. But the key point is that getopt() will outlaw your problematic invocation.
We can't see what went wrong with your code because you didn't show it, but if you go accessing a non-existent argument (like argv[4] when you run ./programName -a 42 -b), then you get core dumps. There are those who write out option parsing code by hand; such code is more vulnerable to such problems than code using getopt() or an equivalent option parsing function.
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Doing regex in C# or PHP is very easy for me now. However currently I have a need to use regex in C. And, I don't seem to understand the usage of regcomp or regexec fully. It's definitely because of my lack of experience in C.
Use the PCRE library. Examples are included in the source, in the demo/ directory. Here's a direct link to pcredemo.c.
This may get you started, as you indicate regex(3) functions. Following is a trivial program matching its arguments. However, if you're relatively new to C, you'll want to go slowly with regex(3), as you'll be working with pointers and arrays and regmatch_t-supplied offsets and lions and tigers and bears. ;)
$ ./regexec '[[:digit:]]' 56789 alpha " " foo12bar
matched: 56789
matched: foo12bar
$ ./regexec '[[:digit:]](foo'
error: Unmatched ( or \(
$ ./regexec '['
error: Invalid regular expression
... and the source:
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <regex.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
int r;
regex_t reg;
++argv; /* Danger! */
if (r = regcomp(®, *argv, REG_NOSUB|REG_EXTENDED)) {
char errbuf[1024];
regerror(r, ®, errbuf, sizeof(errbuf));
printf("error: %s\n", errbuf);
return 1;
}
for (++argv; *argv; ++argv) {
if (regexec(®, *argv, 0, NULL, 0) == REG_NOMATCH)
continue;
printf("matched: %s\n", *argv);
}
return 0;
}
You need a library that provides it, and there are several to choose from. PCRE is one.
There's also libslack(str) - string module:
http://libslack.org/manpages/str.3.html
The gnu C library has a regex library