Getopts loop not working

Question

I am working on a bash script, and I decided to use getopts to get the options, but the loop I used doesn't work! Could someone please help me?

while getopts "u:p:k:s:t:c:l:" flag
do
    echo $flag
    case "$flag" in
        k)  APIKEY="$OPTARG"
            ;;
        s)  APISECRET="$OPTARG"
            ;;
        u)  USERNAME="$OPTARG"
            ;;
        p)  PASSWORD="$OPTARG"
            ;;
        t)  TITLE="$OPTARG"
            ;;
        c)  CATEGORY="$OPTARG"
            ;;
        l)  LANGUAGE="$OPTARG"
            ;;
 esac
done
shift $((OPTIND-1))

None of the above variables are being set.

How do you verify that the variables have been set? When I add `echo $CATEGORY` and run with `sample.sh -c Test`, it outputs `Test`. — choroba, Jun 21 '15 at 08:05
In my script it doesn't work. https://github.com/danog/DailyMotionUpload/raw/master/dmUpload.sh — Danogentili, Jun 21 '15 at 08:07
How do you passing your arguments? Give us command line example — Samuel, Jun 21 '15 at 08:33
On an unrelated note: for displaying usage, you could have used `cat << EOF` instead of `echo`... :-) — anishsane, Jun 21 '15 at 12:38
What do you mean by the loop doesn't work? Are you sure that variables are not populated properly? There could be errors in the code after the loop. Try debugging the code. Change shebang to `#!/bin/bash -vx`. For testing Skip the code after getopts loop by adding an unconditional exit 0 & print the variables collected via getopts loop. Or just call `env` after the `getopts` loop. — anishsane, Jun 21 '15 at 12:39

choroba · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-21T08:19:47.197

1

Don't use = with getopts and short options. Also, if you want to supply "non-options", e.g. file names (video.mp4 in your case), they should come last, not before the options (and you have to change the code accordingly); or you can process them (and shift) before you start the options loop.

dmUpload.sh -u USERNAME -p PASS -k KEY -s SECRET -c CAT -t TILE -l LANG video.mp4

edited Jun 21 '15 at 08:19

answered Jun 21 '15 at 08:13

choroba

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It seems OP would like to use positional arguments as optional list of tags. Then you should save the first option as `infile` and do `shift` before processing with `getopts`. – leesei Jun 21 '15 at 08:17

Getopts loop not working

1 Answers1