How to get arguments with flags in Bash

Question

I know that I can easily get positioned parameters like this in bash:

$0 or $1

I want to be able to use flag options like this to s

Answer 1

I had trouble using getopts with multiple flags, so I wrote this code. It uses a modal variable to detect flags, and to use those flags to assign arguments to variables.

Note that, if a flag shouldn't have an argument, something other than setting CURRENTFLAG can be done.

    for MYFIELD in "$@"; do

        CHECKFIRST=`echo $MYFIELD | cut -c1`

        if [ "$CHECKFIRST" == "-" ]; then
            mode="flag"
        else
            mode="arg"
        fi

        if [ "$mode" == "flag" ]; then
            case $MYFIELD in
                -a)
                    CURRENTFLAG="VARIABLE_A"
                    ;;
                -b)
                    CURRENTFLAG="VARIABLE_B"
                    ;;
                -c)
                    CURRENTFLAG="VARIABLE_C"
                    ;;
            esac
        elif [ "$mode" == "arg" ]; then
            case $CURRENTFLAG in
                VARIABLE_A)
                    VARIABLE_A="$MYFIELD"
                    ;;
                VARIABLE_B)
                    VARIABLE_B="$MYFIELD"
                    ;;
                VARIABLE_C)
                    VARIABLE_C="$MYFIELD"
                    ;;
            esac
        fi
    done