GetoptLong#.quiet not doing what expected

ruby-talk
1

(Writing this message for the second time - curse browsers for not
saving the
contents of input fields like these...)

I'm a very beginner Ruby user. It's a pretty, poetic language. I'm
using it
to write a Nagios plugin.

I took the synopsis that comes in the GetoptLong documentation, and
turned on
the quiet flag.

···

################################################################################

require 'getoptlong'

# specify the options we accept and initialize
# the option parser

opts.quiet = true

opts = GetoptLong.new(
  [ "--size", "-s", GetoptLong::REQUIRED_ARGUMENT ],
  [ "--verbose", "-v", GetoptLong::NO_ARGUMENT ],
  [ "--query", "-q", GetoptLong::NO_ARGUMENT ],
  [ "--check", "--valid", "-c", GetoptLong::NO_ARGUMENT ]
)

# process the parsed options

opts.each do |opt, arg|
  puts "Option: #{opt}, arg #{arg.inspect}"
end

puts "Remaining args: #{ARGV.join(', ')}"
################################################################################

The documentation says that the quiet flag makes the opt.each (in this
case)
stop when it reaches an invalid flag because GetoptLong#.get will have
passed
nil to the opts.each loop on reaching an invalid flag.

I tried this:
$ ruby getoptslongExample.rb -not -a -real -option
getoptslongExample.rb: invalid option -- n
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:265:in `set_error': invalid option -- n
(GetoptLong::InvalidOption) from
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:434:in `get_option'
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:458:in `each'
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:457:in `loop'
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:457:in `each'
        from getoptslongExample.rb:25

This doesn't look very quiet.

I've caught the raised error with the following code:

################################################################################

#snip#

# process the parsed options

begin
  opts.each do |opt, arg|
    puts "Option: #{opt}, arg #{arg.inspect}"
  end
rescue
    print "Chill, it's ok.\n"
    exit
end

################################################################################

This works nicely, but I think I'd rather have the quiet version that I
expected. Actually, what I really like to have is a version that could
tell
the user that *badOption* is invalid.

How would I implement this, and why is the quiet option not doing
anything?

Thanks very much,
Edward Ocampo-Gooding

2

Hi Edward

You could give the commandline gem a try (I wrote it)

  % gem install -r commandline -v 0.7.1

  % cat myapp.rb
  require 'rubygems'
  require 'commandline'

  class MyApp < CommandLine::Application
    def initialize
      option :names => %w(--size -s)
      option :verbose
      option :flag, :names => %w(--query -q)
      option :flag, :names => %w(--check --valid -c)
    end
  end

  % ruby myapp.rb -not -a -real -option
  ERROR: Unknown option '-not'.

* edward.og@gmail.com <edward.og@gmail.com> [2005-07-15 01:00:52 +0900]:

···

I took the synopsis that comes in the GetoptLong documentation, and
turned on
the quiet flag.

################################################################################

require 'getoptlong'

# specify the options we accept and initialize
# the option parser

opts.quiet = true

opts = GetoptLong.new(
  [ "--size", "-s", GetoptLong::REQUIRED_ARGUMENT ],
  [ "--verbose", "-v", GetoptLong::NO_ARGUMENT ],
  [ "--query", "-q", GetoptLong::NO_ARGUMENT ],
  [ "--check", "--valid", "-c", GetoptLong::NO_ARGUMENT ]
)

# process the parsed options

opts.each do |opt, arg|
  puts "Option: #{opt}, arg #{arg.inspect}"
end

puts "Remaining args: #{ARGV.join(', ')}"
################################################################################

The documentation says that the quiet flag makes the opt.each (in this
case)
stop when it reaches an invalid flag because GetoptLong#.get will have
passed
nil to the opts.each loop on reaching an invalid flag.

I tried this:
$ ruby getoptslongExample.rb -not -a -real -option
getoptslongExample.rb: invalid option -- n
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:265:in `set_error': invalid option -- n
(GetoptLong::InvalidOption) from
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:434:in `get_option'
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:458:in `each'
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:457:in `loop'
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/getoptlong.rb:457:in `each'
        from getoptslongExample.rb:25

This doesn't look very quiet.

I've caught the raised error with the following code:

################################################################################

#snip#

# process the parsed options

begin
  opts.each do |opt, arg|
    puts "Option: #{opt}, arg #{arg.inspect}"
  end
rescue
    print "Chill, it's ok.\n"
    exit
end

################################################################################

This works nicely, but I think I'd rather have the quiet version that I
expected. Actually, what I really like to have is a version that could
tell
the user that *badOption* is invalid.

How would I implement this, and why is the quiet option not doing
anything?

--
Jim Freeze

3

That looks very shiny Jim.

I'll give it a whirl. Thanks!