Introduction - Options
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Introduction - Options

Introduction - Options – Defining and processing options

Defining options

Getopt() supports two types of options: short options and long options

Calling a script with short and long options

# Using short options

myphpscript -q -l en -o

# Using long options instead

myphpscript --quite --lang=en --option

# Mixing both

myphpscript -q --lang=en -o

You have to define which options you want to support. The second argument of getopt() requires a string containing all supported chars. For the example above this would be at least:


<?php
$shortoptions = "qlo";
?>

The order of the characters is not important. Often you have to define options with (optional) parameters. To express that a option requires a parameter, you have to add a colon. If the parameter is optional, add a double colon, ie:


<?php
$shortoptions = "ql:o::";
?>

this means the following script calls are permitted, ie.

myphpscript myphpscript -q myphpscript -q -l en myphpscript -o text myphpscript -o

whilst

myphpscript -l

is not permitted. The -l option requires a parameter, if the option is used.

The long options work equally, but they have to be defined in an array:


<?php
$longoptions = array("quite", "lang", "option");
?>

For defining optional parameters, use '=' and '==' like the colon in short options.


<?php
$longoptions = array("quite", "lang=", "option==");
?>

The returned options array

The return value is an array of two elements: the list of parsed options and the list of non-option command-line arguments. Each entry in the list of parsed options is a pair of elements - the first one specifies the option, and the second one specifies the option argument, if there was one, else the value is NULL.

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