2010/8/19 Suraj Kurapati <sun...@gmail.com>: > On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 7:54 PM, Suraj Kurapati <sun...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 8:40 AM, Alexander Teinum <atei...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> What is the most concise way of outputting a usage and help text? >> >> For my programs, the --help option simply displays their manpage. :-) > > Alternatively, in simple shell scripts (for which writing a manpage > would be overkill), I simply print the script file's comment header > using sed(1): > > #!/bin/sh > # your program description & usage documentation here > # nicely formatted and beautified to fit 80 columns > # NOTE: the blank line below is the end of the file comment header > > # check command-line usage > if test "$#" -lt 3; then > sed -n '2,/^$/s/^# \?//p' "$0" # show this file's comment header > exit 1 > fi
I find this solution really convoluted. Why not using echo? You can use an USAGE variable, or even a here-document and cat<< if you feel like it. And btw, it would probably be a good idea to redirect the help message to stderr. -- - yiyus || JGL . 4l77.com
