Parse a short option with getopts.
Read a named option and handle invalid flags explicitly.
set -euo pipefail
set -- -n Morgan
name="friend"
while getopts ":n:" option; do
case "$option" in
n) name="$OPTARG" ;;
*) printf "Usage: snippet.sh -n NAME\n" >&2; exit 2 ;;
esac
done
printf "Hello, %s\n" "$name"Expected output EXAMPLE
Hello, Morgan
Details
Requires Bash 4 or later. Save as snippet.sh and run bash snippet.sh in an empty working directory. The set line provides example arguments; remove it to use arguments passed to your script.
Tested on Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS · · GNU bash, version 5.2.21(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) · bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3
Test inputs, results and environment
The exact published code ran in a dedicated Linux test container with prepared inputs. Snippet process uid 65534 with a read-only root filesystem and temporary working files. Networking disabled. Fixtures and output records are isolated from the application database. Testing covers this example and its stated checks, not every input, operating system, or runtime version. The Linux container shares its host's kernel; this is not a native Windows test.
- Architecture / host kernel
- x86_64 / 6.18.54.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
- Snippet identity / locale
- uid=65534, gid=65534 (unprivileged process) / C.UTF-8
- Interpreter invocation
bash -euo pipefail -c <published code>- Container image ID
sha256:ec91410a8f6ec3e985830b5e3a0560306d36f8c1c5ccd91a6699abe707123fa3- Code SHA-256
69d07db0b2f28ca16d66c75a0a49a0026ac158b59e169b6c69adeb9bf7db84e8- Dependencies
- bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3
Test input setup
These are the prepared inputs used by the test harness. See Details above for the prerequisites and how to run this example.
# No input files required.
Observed standard output
Hello, Morgan
Exit code: 0. Standard error: empty. Validation: Exact stdout comparison. System-dependent values above are one recorded run.