After using PHP's getopt(), how can I tell what arguments remain?

Question

OK, So PHP has a built-in getopt() function which returns information about what program options the user has provided. Only, unless I'm missing something, it's completely borked! From the manual:

The parsing of options will end at the first non-option found, anything that follows is discarded.

So getopt() returns an array with the valid and parsed options only. You can still see the entire original command-line by looking at $argv, which remains unmodified, but how do you tell where in that command-line getopt() stopped parsing arguments? It is essential to know this if you want treat the remainder of a command-line as other stuff (like, e.g., file names).

Here's an example...

Suppose I want to set up a script to accept the following arguments:

Usage: test [OPTION]... [FILE]...  Options:   -a  something   -b  something   -c  something 

Then I might call getopt() like this:

$args = getopt( 'abc' ); 

And, if I ran the script like this:

$ ./test.php -a -bccc file1 file2 file3 

I should expect to have the following array returned to me:

Array (     [a] =>     [b] =>     [c] => Array         (             [0] =>             [1] =>             [2] =>         ) ) 

So the question is this: How on Earth am I supposed to know that the three unparsed, non-option FILE arguments start at $argv[ 3 ]???

Answer 1

Starting with PHP 7.1, getopt supports an optional by-ref param, &$optind, that contains the index where argument parsing stopped. This is useful for mixing flags with positional arguments. E.g.:

user@host:~$ php -r '$i = 0; getopt("a:b:", [], $i); print_r(array_slice($argv, $i));' -- -a 1 -b 2 hello1 hello2 Array (     [0] => hello1     [1] => hello2 ) 

Answer 2

Nobody said you have ot use getopt. You may do it in any way you like:

$arg_a = null; // -a=YOUR_OPTION_A_VALUE $arg_b = null; // -b=YOUR_OPTION_A_VALUE $arg_c = null; // -c=YOUR_OPTION_A_VALUE  $arg_file = null;  // -file=YOUR_OPTION_FILE_VALUE  foreach ( $argv as $arg ) {     unset( $matches );      if ( preg_match( '/^-a=(.*)$/', $arg, $matches ) )     {         $arg_a = $matches[1];     }     else if ( preg_match( '/^-b=(.*)$/', $arg, $matches ) )     {         $arg_b = $matches[1];     }     else if ( preg_match( '/^-c=(.*)$/', $arg, $matches ) )     {         $arg_c = $matches[1];     }     else if ( preg_match( '/^-file=(.*)$/', $arg, $matches ) )     {         $arg_file = $matches[1];     }     else     {         // all the unrecognized stuff     } }//foreach  if ( $arg_a === null )    { /* missing a - do sth here */ } if ( $arg_b === null )    { /* missing b - do sth here */ } if ( $arg_c === null )    { /* missing c - do sth here */ } if ( $arg_file === null ) { /* missing file - do sth here */ }  echo "a=[$arg_a]\n"; echo "b=[$arg_b]\n"; echo "c=[$arg_c]\n"; echo "file=[$arg_file]\n"; 

I always do it like that and it works. Moreover I can do whatever I want with it.