How to get arguments with flags in Bash

This is the idiom I usually use:

while test $# -gt 0; do
  case "$1" in
    -h|--help)
      echo "$package - attempt to capture frames"
      echo " "
      echo "$package [options] application [arguments]"
      echo " "
      echo "options:"
      echo "-h, --help                show brief help"
      echo "-a, --action=ACTION       specify an action to use"
      echo "-o, --output-dir=DIR      specify a directory to store output in"
      exit 0
      ;;
    -a)
      shift
      if test $# -gt 0; then
        export PROCESS=$1
      else
        echo "no process specified"
        exit 1
      fi
      shift
      ;;
    --action*)
      export PROCESS=`echo $1 | sed -e 's/^[^=]*=//g'`
      shift
      ;;
    -o)
      shift
      if test $# -gt 0; then
        export OUTPUT=$1
      else
        echo "no output dir specified"
        exit 1
      fi
      shift
      ;;
    --output-dir*)
      export OUTPUT=`echo $1 | sed -e 's/^[^=]*=//g'`
      shift
      ;;
    *)
      break
      ;;
  esac
done

Key points are:

• $# is the number of arguments
• while loop looks at all the arguments supplied, matching on their values inside a case statement
• shift takes the first one away. You can shift multiple times inside of a case statement to take multiple values.

This example uses Bash's built-in getopts command and is from the Google Shell Style Guide:

a_flag=''
b_flag=''
files=''
verbose='false'

print_usage() {
  printf "Usage: ..."
}

while getopts 'abf:v' flag; do
  case "${flag}" in
    a) a_flag='true' ;;
    b) b_flag='true' ;;
    f) files="${OPTARG}" ;;
    v) verbose='true' ;;
    *) print_usage
       exit 1 ;;
  esac
done

Note: If a character is followed by a colon (e.g. f:), that option is expected to have an argument.

Example usage: ./script -v -a -b -f filename

Using getopts has several advantages over the accepted answer:

• the while condition is a lot more readable and shows what the accepted options are
• cleaner code; no counting the number of parameters and shifting
• you can join options (e.g. -a -b -c → -abc)

However, a big disadvantage is that it doesn't support long options, only single-character options.