Using getopt in C with non-option arguments

Question

I'm making a small program in C that deals with a lot of command line arguments, so I decided to use getopt to sort them for me.

However, I want two non-option arguments (source and destination files) to be mandatory, so you have to have them as arguments while calling the program, even if there's no flags or other arguments.

Here's a simplified version of what I have to handle the arguments with flags:

while ((c = getopt(argc, argv, "i:d:btw:h:s:")) != -1) {
    switch (c) {
        case 'i': {
            i = (int)atol(optarg);
        }
        case 'd': {
            d = (int)atol(optarg);
        }
        case 'b':
            buf = 1;
            break;
        case 't':
            time = 1;
            break;
        case 'w':
            w = (int)atol(optarg);
            break;
        case 'h':
            h = (int)atol(optarg);
            break;
        case 's':
            s = (int)atol(optarg);
            break;
        default:
            break;
    }
}

How do I edit this so that non-option arguments are also handled?

I also want to be able to have the non-options either before or after the options, so how would that be handled?

Answer 1

getopt sets the optind variable to indicate the position of the next argument.

Add code similar to this after the options loop:

if (argv[optind] == NULL || argv[optind + 1] == NULL) {
  printf("Mandatory argument(s) missing\n");
  exit(1);
}

Edit:

If you want to allow options after regular arguments you can do something similar to this:

while (optind < argc) {
  if ((c = getopt(argc, argv, "i:d:btw:h:s:")) != -1) {
    // Option argument
    switch (c) {
    case 'i':
      i = (int)atol(optarg);
      break;
    case 'd':
      d = (int)atol(optarg);
      break;
    case 'b':
      buf = 1;
      break;
    case 't':
      time = 1;
      break;
    case 'w':
      w = (int)atol(optarg);
      break;
    case 'h':
      h = (int)atol(optarg);
      break;
    case 's':
      s = (int)atol(optarg);
      break;
    default:
      // bad or unknown option
      show_help();
      exit(1);
      break;
    }
  } else {
      // Regular argument
      <code to handle the argument>
      optind++;  // Skip to the next argument
  }
}