Getopt

Getopt parses a parameters string and outputs it in a normalized format. Imagine you want to write your own bash script foo that takes options. It should be no matter if the user calls it foo -abcd or foo -a -b -c -d getopt normalizes the parameters: scorpio:~ # getopt abcd -abcd -a -b -c -d -- The first parameter tells getopt which options are allowed (a,b,c and d in this case), the second parameter is the string to be normalized.

Provided by
Most (all?) Linux distributions incorporate this from the [util-linux] project.