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| <h4 class="subsection">25.1.2 Parsing Program Arguments</h4> |
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| <p><a name="index-program-arguments_002c-parsing-3020"></a><a name="index-command-arguments_002c-parsing-3021"></a><a name="index-parsing-program-arguments-3022"></a>If the syntax for the command line arguments to your program is simple |
| enough, you can simply pick the arguments off from <var>argv</var> by hand. |
| But unless your program takes a fixed number of arguments, or all of the |
| arguments are interpreted in the same way (as file names, for example), |
| you are usually better off using <code>getopt</code> (see <a href="Getopt.html#Getopt">Getopt</a>) or |
| <code>argp_parse</code> (see <a href="Argp.html#Argp">Argp</a>) to do the parsing. |
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| <p><code>getopt</code> is more standard (the short-option only version of it is a |
| part of the POSIX standard), but using <code>argp_parse</code> is often |
| easier, both for very simple and very complex option structures, because |
| it does more of the dirty work for you. |
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| <ul class="menu"> |
| <li><a accesskey="1" href="Getopt.html#Getopt">Getopt</a>: Parsing program options using <code>getopt</code>. |
| <li><a accesskey="2" href="Argp.html#Argp">Argp</a>: Parsing program options using <code>argp_parse</code>. |
| <li><a accesskey="3" href="Suboptions.html#Suboptions">Suboptions</a>: Some programs need more detailed options. |
| <li><a accesskey="4" href="Suboptions-Example.html#Suboptions-Example">Suboptions Example</a>: This shows how it could be done for <code>mount</code>. |
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