Bash scripting question

[leaded]

I was asked to write a bash script for upgrading our OC4J application. They want me to add an option to not back up a specific directory. There's a folder called application-deployments/iemp/ that we want the option. By default, it copies and saves the data, but we want to add something like --nodeployments that will not include that folder to be tar'd and later untar'd.

Here's now it normally looks:
# new-iemp.sh iemp.ear

We want it to look like this:
# new-iemp.sh --nodeployments iemp.ear

In my script, I reference the file, iemp.ear in this example, as $1. I initially tried to add this flag after the file as a $2, but I couldn't get the result I was hoping for. I've searched several times on Google but I can't find what I'm looking for, can someone help me out? I can attach the script so far (without any flag-stuff) if that would help.

Thanks in advance!

[tscheez]

using tar as a backup program, check the man page, there's an exclude from file function (-X <filename>) double check, but i think that's it

[leaded]

Yeah, I remember seeing that but I wanted to know how to activate a flag within a script I'm writing. My script contains a couple of tar references. In fact, my switch on the command line could switch on the exclude function. I'm asking more of how to implement my own switch into my custom script. In fact I might have this optional directory on a different line so the -X might not be required.

My script is new-iemp.sh, and it requires the use of a file. It doesn't require anything else to be run. I'd like to have an optional flag, --nodeployments, that would activate some directory not to be backed up (or, to make more sense, the script would check for the --nodeployments flag and if it's not present it WILL back up the directory)

Are there any examples someone can point me to? Thanks!

[daverj]

use the built-in getopts command. It parses commandline options and switches. Google 'getopts' or 'bash getopts'. I'm sure you will find plenty of examples.

[leaded]

THANK YOU!!!!!

I've now implemented a -d flag! I guess the word I needed to Google for was 'flag' not 'option.' Oh well, thanks so much!

But I couldn't figure out how to do a "long" option. Searching for long just returned a bunch of Perl stuff. How do I do something like "--nodeployments"?

Thanks!