popt
POPT(3) Linux Programmer's Manual POPT(3)
NAME
popt - Parse command line options
SYNOPSIS
#include <popt.h>
poptContext poptGetContext(const char * name, int argc,
const char ** argv,
const struct poptOption * options,
int flags);
void poptFreeContext(poptContext con);
void poptResetContext(poptContext con);
int poptGetNextOpt(poptContext con);
const char * poptGetOptArg(poptContext con);
const char * poptGetArg(poptContext con);
const char * poptPeekArg(poptContext con);
const char ** poptGetArgs(poptContext con);
const char *const poptStrerror(const int error);
const char * poptBadOption(poptContext con, int flags);
int poptReadDefaultConfig(poptContext con, int flags);
int poptReadConfigFile(poptContext con, char * fn);
int poptAddAlias(poptContext con, struct poptAlias alias,
int flags);
int poptParseArgvString(char * s, int * argcPtr,
const char *** argvPtr);
int poptDupArgv(int argc, const char ** argv, int * argcPtr,
const char *** argvPtr);
int poptStuffArgs(poptContext con, const char ** argv);
DESCRIPTION
The popt library exists essentially for parsing command-line options.
It is found superior in many ways when compared to parsing the argv
array by hand or using the getopt functions getopt() and getopt_long()
[see getopt(3)]. Some specific advantages of popt are: it does not
utilize global variables, thus enabling multiple passes in parsing argv
; it can parse an arbitrary array of argv-style elements, allowing
parsing of command-line-strings from any source; it provides a standard
method of option aliasing (to be discussed at length below.); it can
exec external option filters; and, finally, it can automatically gener-
ate help and usage messages for the application.
Like getopt_long(), the popt library supports short and long style
options. Recall that a short option consists of a - character followed
by a single alphanumeric character. A long option, common in GNU util-
ities, consists of two - characters followed by a string made up of
letters, numbers and hyphens. Long options are optionally allowed to
begin with a single -, primarily to allow command-line compatibility
between popt applications and X toolkit applications. Either type of
option may be followed by an argument. A space separates a short
option from its arguments; either a space or an = separates a long
option from an argument.
The popt library is highly portable and should work on any POSIX plat-
form. The latest version is distributed with rpm and is always avail-
able from: ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/dist.
It may be redistributed under the X consortium license, see the file
COPYING in the popt source distribution for details.
BASIC POPT USAGE
1. THE OPTION TABLE
Applications provide popt with information on their command-line
options by means of an "option table," i.e., an array of struct poptOp-
tion structures:
#include <popt.h>
struct poptOption {
const char * longName; /* may be NULL */
char shortName; /* may be '\0' */
int argInfo;
void * arg; /* depends on argInfo */
int val; /* 0 means don't return, just update flag */
char * descrip; /* description for autohelp -- may be NULL */
char * argDescrip; /* argument description for autohelp */
};
Each member of the table defines a single option that may be passed to
the program. Long and short options are considered a single option
that may occur in two different forms. The first two members, longName
and shortName, define the names of the option; the first is a long
name, while the latter is a single character.
The argInfo member tells popt what type of argument is expected after
the argument. If no option is expected, POPT_ARG_NONE should be used.
The rest of the valid values are shown in the following table:
Value Description arg Type
POPT_ARG_NONE No argument expected int
POPT_ARG_STRING No type checking to be performed char *
POPT_ARG_INT An integer argument is expected int
POPT_ARG_LONG A long integer is expected long
POPT_ARG_VAL Integer value taken from val int
POPT_ARG_FLOAT An float argument is expected float
POPT_ARG_DOUBLE A double argument is expected double
For numeric values, if the argInfo value is bitwise or'd with one of
POPT_ARGFLAG_OR, POPT_ARGFLAG_AND, or POPT_ARGFLAG_XOR, the value is
saved by performing an OR, AND, or XOR. If the argInfo value is bit-
wise or'd with POPT_ARGFLAG_NOT, the value will be negated before sav-
ing. For the common operations of setting and/or clearing bits,
POPT_BIT_SET and POPT_BIT_CLR have the appropriate flags set to perform
bit operations.
If the argInfo value is bitwise or'd with POPT_ARGFLAG_ONEDASH, the
long argument may be given with a single - instead of two. For example,
if --longopt is an option with POPT_ARGFLAG_ONEDASH, is specified,
-longopt is accepted as well.
The next element, arg, allows popt to automatically update program
variables when the option is used. If arg is NULL, it is ignored and
popt takes no special action. Otherwise it should point to a variable
of the type indicated in the right-most column of the table above.
If the option takes no argument (argInfo is POPT_ARG_NONE), the vari-
able pointed to by arg is set to 1 when the option is used. (Inciden-
tally, it will perhaps not escape the attention of hunt-and-peck typ-
ists that the value of POPT_ARG_NONE is 0.) If the option does take an
argument, the variable that arg points to is updated to reflect the
value of the argument. Any string is acceptable for POPT_ARG_STRING
arguments, but POPT_ARG_INT, POPT_ARG_LONG, POPT_ARG_FLOAT, and
POPT_ARG_DOUBLE are converted to the appropriate type, and an error
returned if the conversion fails.
POPT_ARG_VAL causes arg to be set to the (integer) value of val when
the argument is found. This is most often useful for mutually-exclu-
sive arguments in cases where it is not an error for multiple arguments
to occur and where you want the last argument specified to win; for
example, "rm -i -f". POPT_ARG_VAL causes the parsing function not to
return a value, since the value of val has already been used.
If the argInfo value is bitwise or'd with POPT_ARGFLAG_OPTIONAL, the
argument to the long option may be omitted. If the long option is used
without an argument, a default value of zero or NULL will be saved (if
the arg pointer is present), otherwise behavior will be identical to a
long option with argument.
The next option, val, is the value popt's parsing function should
return when the option is encountered. If it is 0, the parsing func-
tion does not return a value, instead parsing the next command-line
argument.
The last two options, descrip and argDescrip are only required if auto-
matic help messages are desired (automatic usage messages can be gener-
ated without them). descrip is a text description of the argument and
argdescrip is a short summary of the type of arguments the option
expects, or NULL if the option doesn't require any arguments.
If popt should automatically provide --usage and --help (-?) options,
one line in the table should be the macro POPT_AUTOHELP. This macro
includes another option table (via POPT_ARG_INCLUDE_TABLE; see below)
in the main one which provides the table entries for these arguments.
When --usage or --help are passed to programs which use popt's automat-
ical help, popt displays the appropriate message on stderr as soon as
it finds the option, and exits the program with a return code of 0. If
you want to use popt's automatic help generation in a different way,
you need to explicitly add the option entries to your programs option
table instead of using POPT_AUTOHELP.
If the argInfo value is bitwise or'd with POPT_ARGFLAG_DOC_HIDDEN, the
argument will not be shown in help output.
If the argInfo value is bitwise or'd with POPT_ARGFLAG_SHOW_DEFAULT,
the inital value of the arg will be shown in help output.
The final structure in the table should have all the pointer values set
to NULL and all the arithmetic values set to 0, marking the end of the
table. The macro POPT_TABLEEND is provided to do that.
There are two types of option table entries which do not specify com-
mand line options. When either of these types of entries are used, the
longName element must be NULL and the shortName element must be '\0'.
The first of these special entry types allows the application to nest
another option table in the current one; such nesting may extend quite
deeply (the actual depth is limited by the program's stack). Including
other option tables allows a library to provide a standard set of
command-line options to every program which uses it (this is often done
in graphical programming toolkits, for example). To do this, set the
argInfo field to POPT_ARG_INCLUDE_TABLE and the arg field to point to
the table which is being included. If automatic help generation is
being used, the descrip field should contain a overall description of
the option table being included.
The other special option table entry type tells popt to call a function
(a callback) when any option in that table is found. This is especially
usefull when included option tables are being used, as the program
which provides the top-level option table doesn't need to be aware of
the other options which are provided by the included table. When a
callback is set for a table, the parsing function never returns infor-
mation on an option in the table. Instead, options information must be
retained via the callback or by having popt set a variable through the
option's arg field. Option callbacks should match the following proto-
type:
void poptCallbackType(poptContext con,
const struct poptOption * opt,
const char * arg, void * data);
The first parameter is the context which is being parsed (see the next
section for information on contexts), opt points to the option which
triggered this callback, and arg is the option's argument. If the
option does not take an argument, arg is NULL. The final parameter,
data is taken from the descrip field of the option table entry which
defined the callback. As descrip is a pointer, this allows callback
functions to be passed an arbitrary set of data (though a typecast will
have to be used).
The option table entry which defines a callback has an argInfo of
POPT_ARG_CALLBACK, an arg which points to the callback function, and a
descrip field which specifies an arbitrary pointer to be passed to the
callback.
2. CREATING A CONTEXT
popt can interleave the parsing of multiple command-line sets. It
allows this by keeping all the state information for a particular set
of command-line arguments in a poptContext data structure, an opaque
type that should not be modified outside the popt library.
New popt contexts are created by poptGetContext():
poptContext poptGetContext(const char * name, int argc,
const char ** argv,
const struct poptOption * options,
int flags);
The first parameter, name, is used only for alias handling (discussed
later). It should be the name of the application whose options are
being parsed, or should be NULL if no option aliasing is desired. The
next two arguments specify the command-line arguments to parse. These
are generally passed to poptGetContext() exactly as they were passed to
the program's main() function. The options parameter points to the ta-
ble of command-line options, which was described in the previous sec-
tion. The final parameter, flags, can take one of three values:
Value Description
POPT_CONTEXT_NO_EXEC Ignore exec expansions
POPT_CONTEXT_KEEP_FIRST Do not ignore argv[0]
POPT_CONTEXT_POSIXMEHARDER Options cannot follow arguments
A poptContext keeps track of which options have already been parsed and
which remain, among other things. If a program wishes to restart option
processing of a set of arguments, it can reset the poptContext by
passing the context as the sole argument to poptResetContext().
When argument processing is complete, the process should free the popt-
Context as it contains dynamically allocated components. The popt-
FreeContext() function takes a poptContext as its sole argument and
frees the resources the context is using.
Here are the prototypes of both poptResetContext() and poptFreeCon-
text():
#include <popt.h>
void poptFreeContext(poptContext con);
void poptResetContext(poptContext con);
3. PARSING THE COMMAND LINE
After an application has created a poptContext, it may begin parsing
arguments. poptGetNextOpt() performs the actual argument parsing.
#include <popt.h>
int poptGetNextOpt(poptContext con);
Taking the context as its sole argument, this function parses the next
command-line argument found. After finding the next argument in the
option table, the function fills in the object pointed to by the option
table entry's arg pointer if it is not NULL. If the val entry for the
option is non-0, the function then returns that value. Otherwise, popt-
GetNextOpt() continues on to the next argument.
poptGetNextOpt() returns -1 when the final argument has been parsed,
and other negative values when errors occur. This makes it a good idea
to keep the val elements in the options table greater than 0.
If all of the command-line options are handled through arg pointers,
command-line parsing is reduced to the following line of code:
rc = poptGetNextOpt(poptcon);
Many applications require more complex command-line parsing than this,
however, and use the following structure:
while ((rc = poptGetNextOpt(poptcon)) > 0) {
switch (rc) {
/* specific arguments are handled here */
}
}
When returned options are handled, the application needs to know the
value of any arguments that were specified after the option. There are
two ways to discover them. One is to ask popt to fill in a variable
with the value of the option through the option table's arg elements.
The other is to use poptGetOptArg():
#include <popt.h>
const char * poptGetOptArg(poptContext con);
This function returns the argument given for the final option returned
by poptGetNextOpt(), or it returns NULL if no argument was specified.
4. LEFTOVER ARGUMENTS
Many applications take an arbitrary number of command-line arguments,
such as a list of file names. When popt encounters an argument that
does not begin with a -, it assumes it is such an argument and adds it
to a list of leftover arguments. Three functions allow applications to
access such arguments:
const char * poptGetArg(poptContext con);
This function returns the next leftover argument and marks it as
processed.
const char * poptPeekArg(poptContext con);
The next leftover argument is returned but not marked as pro-
cessed. This allows an application to look ahead into the argu-
ment list, without modifying the list.
const char ** poptGetArgs(poptContext con);
All the leftover arguments are returned in a manner identical to
argv. The final element in the returned array points to NULL,
indicating the end of the arguments.
5. AUTOMATIC HELP MESSAGES
The popt library can automatically generate help messages which
describe the options a program accepts. There are two types of help
messages which can be generated. Usage messages are a short messages
which lists valid options, but does not describe them. Help messages
describe each option on one (or more) lines, resulting in a longer, but
more useful, message. Whenever automatic help messages are used, the
descrip and argDescrip fields struct poptOption members should be
filled in for each option.
The POPT_AUTOHELP macro makes it easy to add --usage and --help mes-
sages to your program, and is described in part 1 of this man page. If
more control is needed over your help messages, the following two func-
tions are available:
#include <popt.h>
void poptPrintHelp(poptContext con, FILE * f, int flags);
void poptPrintUsage(poptContext con, FILE * f, int flags);
poptPrintHelp() displays the standard help message to the stdio file
descriptor f, while poptPrintUsage() displays the shorter usage mes-
sage. Both functions currently ignore the flags argument; it is there
to allow future changes.
ERROR HANDLING
All of the popt functions that can return errors return integers. When
an error occurs, a negative error code is returned. The following table
summarizes the error codes that occur:
Error Description
POPT_ERROR_NOARG Argument missing for an option.
POPT_ERROR_BADOPT Option's argument couldn't be parsed.
POPT_ERROR_OPTSTOODEEP Option aliasing nested too deeply.
POPT_ERROR_BADQUOTE Quotations do not match.
POPT_ERROR_BADNUMBER Option couldn't be converted to number.
POPT_ERROR_OVERFLOW A given number was too big or small.
Here is a more detailed discussion of each error:
POPT_ERROR_NOARG
An option that requires an argument was specified on the command
line, but no argument was given. This can be returned only by
poptGetNextOpt().
POPT_ERROR_BADOPT
An option was specified in argv but is not in the option table.
This error can be returned only from poptGetNextOpt().
POPT_ERROR_OPTSTOODEEP
A set of option aliases is nested too deeply. Currently, popt
follows options only 10 levels to prevent infinite recursion.
Only poptGetNextOpt() can return this error.
POPT_ERROR_BADQUOTE
A parsed string has a quotation mismatch (such as a single quo-
tation mark). poptParseArgvString(), poptReadConfigFile(), or
poptReadDefaultConfig() can return this error.
POPT_ERROR_BADNUMBER
A conversion from a string to a number (int or long) failed due
to the string containing nonnumeric characters. This occurs when
poptGetNextOpt() is processing an argument of type POPT_ARG_INT,
POPT_ARG_LONG, POPT_ARG_FLOAT, or POPT_ARG_DOUBLE.
POPT_ERROR_OVERFLOW
A string-to-number conversion failed because the number was too
large or too small. Like POPT_ERROR_BADNUMBER, this error can
occur only when poptGetNextOpt() is processing an argument of
type POPT_ARG_INT, POPT_ARG_LONG, POPT_ARG_FLOAT, or
POPT_ARG_DOUBLE.
POPT_ERROR_ERRNO
A system call returned with an error, and errno still contains
the error from the system call. Both poptReadConfigFile() and
poptReadDefaultConfig() can return this error.
Two functions are available to make it easy for applications to provide
good error messages.
const char *const poptStrerror(const int error);
This function takes a popt error code and returns a string
describing the error, just as with the standard strerror() func-
tion.
const char * poptBadOption(poptContext con, int flags);
If an error occurred during poptGetNextOpt(), this function
returns the option that caused the error. If the flags argument
is set to POPT_BADOPTION_NOALIAS, the outermost option is
returned. Otherwise, flags should be 0, and the option that is
returned may have been specified through an alias.
These two functions make popt error handling trivial for most applica-
tions. When an error is detected from most of the functions, an error
message is printed along with the error string from poptStrerror().
When an error occurs during argument parsing, code similiar to the fol-
lowing displays a useful error message:
fprintf(stderr, "%s: %s\n",
poptBadOption(optCon, POPT_BADOPTION_NOALIAS),
poptStrerror(rc));
OPTION ALIASING
One of the primary benefits of using popt over getopt() is the ability
to use option aliasing. This lets the user specify options that popt
expands into other options when they are specified. If the standard
grep program made use of popt, users could add a --text option that
expanded to -i -n -E -2 to let them more easily find information in
text files.
1. SPECIFYING ALIASES
Aliases are normally specified in two places: /etc/popt and the .popt
file in the user's home directory (found through the HOME environment
variable). Both files have the same format, an arbitrary number of
lines formatted like this:
appname alias newoption expansion
The appname is the name of the application, which must be the same as
the name parameter passed to poptGetContext(). This allows each file to
specify aliases for multiple programs. The alias keyword specifies that
an alias is being defined; currently popt configuration files support
only aliases, but other abilities may be added in the future. The next
option is the option that should be aliased, and it may be either a
short or a long option. The rest of the line specifies the expansion
for the alias. It is parsed similarly to a shell command, which allows
\, ", and ' to be used for quoting. If a backslash is the final charac-
ter on a line, the next line in the file is assumed to be a logical
continuation of the line containing the backslash, just as in shell.
The following entry would add a --text option to the grep command, as
suggested at the beginning of this section.
grep alias --text -i -n -E -2
2. ENABLING ALIASES
An application must enable alias expansion for a poptContext before
calling poptGetNextArg() for the first time. There are three functions
that define aliases for a context:
int poptReadDefaultConfig(poptContext con, int flags);
This function reads aliases from /etc/popt and the .popt file in
the user's home directory. Currently, flags should be NULL, as
it is provided only for future expansion.
int poptReadConfigFile(poptContext con, char * fn);
The file specified by fn is opened and parsed as a popt configu-
ration file. This allows programs to use program-specific con-
figuration files.
int poptAddAlias(poptContext con, struct poptAlias alias,
int flags);
Occasionally, processes want to specify aliases without having
to read them from a configuration file. This function adds a new
alias to a context. The flags argument should be 0, as it is
currently reserved for future expansion. The new alias is speci-
fied as a struct poptAlias, which is defined as:
struct poptAlias {
const char * longName; /* may be NULL */
char shortName; /* may be '\0' */
int argc;
const char ** argv; /* must be free()able */
};
The first two elements, longName and shortName, specify the
option that is aliased. The final two, argc and argv, define the
expansion to use when the aliases option is encountered.
PARSING ARGUMENT STRINGS
Although popt is usually used for parsing arguments already divided
into an argv-style array, some programs need to parse strings that are
formatted identically to command lines. To facilitate this, popt pro-
vides a function that parses a string into an array of strings, using
rules similiar to normal shell parsing.
#include <popt.h>
int poptParseArgvString(char * s, int * argcPtr,
char *** argvPtr);
int poptDupArgv(int argc, const char ** argv, int * argcPtr,
const char *** argvPtr);
The string s is parsed into an argv-style array. The integer pointed to
by the argcPtr parameter contains the number of elements parsed, and
the final argvPtr parameter contains the address of the newly created
array. The routine poptDupArgv() can be used to make a copy of an
existing argument array.
The argvPtr created by poptParseArgvString() or poptDupArgv() is suit-
able to pass directly to poptGetContext(). Both routines return a sin-
gle dynamically allocated contiguous block of storage and should be
free()ed when the application is finished with the storage.
HANDLING EXTRA ARGUMENTS
Some applications implement the equivalent of option aliasing but need
to do so through special logic. The poptStuffArgs() function allows an
application to insert new arguments into the current poptContext.
#include <popt.h>
int poptStuffArgs(poptContext con, const char ** argv);
The passed argv must have a NULL pointer as its final element. When
poptGetNextOpt() is next called, the "stuffed" arguments are the first
to be parsed. popt returns to the normal arguments once all the stuffed
arguments have been exhausted.
EXAMPLE
The following example is a simplified version of the program "robin"
which appears in Chapter 15 of the text cited below. Robin has been
stripped of everything but its argument-parsing logic, slightly
reworked, and renamed "parse." It may prove useful in illustrating at
least some of the features of the extremely rich popt library.
#include <popt.h>
#include <stdio.h>
void usage(poptContext optCon, int exitcode, char *error, char *addl) {
poptPrintUsage(optCon, stderr, 0);
if (error) fprintf(stderr, "%s: %s0, error, addl);
exit(exitcode);
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
char c; /* used for argument parsing */
int i = 0; /* used for tracking options */
char *portname;
int speed = 0; /* used in argument parsing to set speed */
int raw = 0; /* raw mode? */
int j;
char buf[BUFSIZ+1];
poptContext optCon; /* context for parsing command-line options */
struct poptOption optionsTable[] = {
{ "bps", 'b', POPT_ARG_INT, &speed, 0,
"signaling rate in bits-per-second", "BPS" },
{ "crnl", 'c', 0, 0, 'c',
"expand cr characters to cr/lf sequences" },
{ "hwflow", 'h', 0, 0, 'h',
"use hardware (RTS/CTS) flow control" },
{ "noflow", 'n', 0, 0, 'n',
"use no flow control" },
{ "raw", 'r', 0, &raw, 0,
"don't perform any character conversions" },
{ "swflow", 's', 0, 0, 's',
"use software (XON/XOF) flow control" } ,
POPT_AUTOHELP
{ NULL, 0, 0, NULL, 0 }
};
optCon = poptGetContext(NULL, argc, argv, optionsTable, 0);
poptSetOtherOptionHelp(optCon, "[OPTIONS]* <port>");
if (argc < 2) {
poptPrintUsage(optCon, stderr, 0);
exit(1);
}
/* Now do options processing, get portname */
while ((c = poptGetNextOpt(optCon)) >= 0) {
switch (c) {
case 'c':
buf[i++] = 'c';
break;
case 'h':
buf[i++] = 'h';
break;
case 's':
buf[i++] = 's';
break;
case 'n':
buf[i++] = 'n';
break;
}
}
portname = poptGetArg(optCon);
if((portname == NULL) || !(poptPeekArg(optCon) == NULL))
usage(optCon, 1, "Specify a single port", ".e.g., /dev/cua0");
if (c < -1) {
/* an error occurred during option processing */
fprintf(stderr, "%s: %s\n",
poptBadOption(optCon, POPT_BADOPTION_NOALIAS),
poptStrerror(c));
return 1;
}
/* Print out options, portname chosen */
printf("Options chosen: ");
for(j = 0; j < i ; j++)
printf("-%c ", buf[j]);
if(raw) printf("-r ");
if(speed) printf("-b %d ", speed);
printf("\nPortname chosen: %s\n", portname);
poptFreeContext(optCon);
exit(0);
}
RPM, a popular Linux package management program, makes heavy use of
popt's features. Many of its command-line arguments are implemented
through popt aliases, which makes RPM an excellent example of how to
take advantage of the popt library. For more information on RPM, see
http://www.rpm.org. The popt source code distribution includes test
program(s) which use all of the features of the popt libraries in vari-
ous ways. If a feature isn't working for you, the popt test code is the
first place to look.
BUGS
None presently known.
AUTHOR
Erik W. Troan <ewt@redhat.com>
This man page is derived in part from Linux Application Development by
Michael K. Johnson and Erik W. Troan, Copyright (c) 1998 by Addison
Wesley Longman, Inc., and included in the popt documentation with the
permission of the Publisher and the appreciation of the Authors.
Thanks to Robert Lynch for his extensive work on this man page.
SEE ALSO
getopt(3)
Linux Application Development, by Michael K. Johnson and Erik W. Troan
(Addison-Wesley, 1998; ISBN 0-201-30821-5), Chapter 24.
popt.ps is a Postscript version of the above cited book chapter. It can
be found in the source archive for popt available at:
ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm.
June 30, 1998 POPT(3)
