Using getopts to process long and short command line options

Question

I wish to have long and short forms of command line options invoked using my shell script.

I know that getopts can be used, but like in Perl, I have not

Answer 1

If all your long options have unique, and matching, first characters as the short options, so for example

./slamm --chaos 23 --plenty test -quiet

Is the same as

./slamm -c 23 -p test -q

You can use this before getopts to rewrite $args:

# change long options to short options

for arg; do 
    [[ "${arg:0:1}" == "-" ]] && delim="" || delim="\""
    if [ "${arg:0:2}" == "--" ]; 
       then args="${args} -${arg:2:1}" 
       else args="${args} ${delim}${arg}${delim}"
    fi
done

# reset the incoming args
eval set -- $args

# proceed as usual
while getopts ":b:la:h" OPTION; do
    .....

Thanks for mtvee for the inspiration ;-)