Re: [TopGit PATCH] Check for help invocation before setup

From: martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org>
Date: Nov 19, 2008, 18:32 UTC
Message-ID: <20081119183234.GA19781@piper.oerlikon.madduck.net>
In-Reply-To: <20081119182436.GB10544@machine.or.cz>

also sprach Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> [2008.11.19.1924 +0100]:

Show 19 quoted lines

> > +args_saved="$@"
> > +while [ -n "$1" ]; do
> > +	case "$1" in
> > +	help|--help|-h)
> > +		shift
> > +		do_help "$1"
> > +		exit 1;;
> > +	esac
> > +	shift
> > +done
> > +set -- $args_saved
> > +unset args_saved
> >  
> >  ## Initial setup
> 
> Huh, why do you actually need $args_saved at all? :-) This is bound to
> do horrible things with space-containing arguments etc., I think. You
> don't need to do the outer shift and then drop $args_saved altogether,
> no?

I figured I need to restore $@ for others to consume, e.g. when you check for -r later.

The challenge is to identify help|--help|-h anywhere on the command line. Thus, you need to iterate, or do some weird matching against $*.

When you iterate in a for loop, it's not easy to get at the next argument, except if you use a state machine. I wanted to avoid that.

But you are right, I am wreaking havoc with space-containing arguments. I will have to go back and rework this.

I take it you agree with the general principle though?

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