popt库使用

Question

I am trying to get my head around how the popt library functions for parsing command line arguments to a program. I am stuck right at the start! For instance wha is the purpose of the structure poptOptions and how does poptGetCoontext() work?

I know that there is a bit to cover, so does anyone have any advice on where I can get more info on this library? A tutorial, official documentation, or any source of information to get me started.

A brief of what I am trying to do:

Currently an application is set up to accept arguments in the format

bin/app_name string1 string2 string3 < file_name

What I intend to do is

bin/app_name string1 string2 string3 string4 < file_name1

and depending on string4, the file (file_name1) will need to be formatted.

Any help on this will be much appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

In any Linux system, install popt developer package eg, Fedora:

sudo dnf install popt-dev

In Debian and Ubuntu it probably is:

sudo apt-get install libpopt-dev

after a successful installation do:

man popt.3

or

man 3 popt

I believe the manual and library are extensive enough. If they aren't for you or you feel out of luck, try to download rpm source code as it relies heavily in this library for command line processing.

I hope this was useful.