> I'll give some thought to further clarifications.
Something like this:
While processing the option list, getopt() can detect two kinds of
errors: (1) an option character that was not specified in opt‐
string and (2) a missing option argument (i.e., an option at the
end of the command line without an expected argument). Such
errors are handled and reported as follows:
* By default, getopt() prints an error message on standard error,
places the erroneous option character in optopt, and returns
'?' as the function result.
* If the caller has set the global variable opterr to zero, then
getopt() does not print an error message. The caller can
determine that there was an error by testing whether the func‐
tion return value is '?'. (By default, opterr has a nonzero
value.)
* If the first character (following any optional '+' or '-'
described above) of optstring is a colon (':'), then getopt()
likewise does not print an error message. In addition, it
returns ':' instead of '?' to indicate a missing option argu‐
ment. This allows the caller to distinguish the two different
types of errors.
Easier to parse, I hope(?).
Cheers,
Michael
--
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
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