exec/example.R

In trevorld/getopt: C-Like 'getopt' Behavior

#!/path/to/Rscript
library('getopt')
library('stats')
#get options, using the spec as defined by the enclosed list.
#we read the options from the default: commandArgs(TRUE).
spec = matrix(c(
  'verbose', 'v', 2, "integer",
  'help'   , 'h', 0, "logical",
  'count'  , 'c', 1, "integer",
  'mean'   , 'm', 1, "double",
  'sd'     , 's', 1, "double"
), byrow=TRUE, ncol=4)
opt = getopt(spec)

# if help was asked for print a friendly message 
# and exit with a non-zero error code
if ( !is.null(opt$help) ) {
  cat(getopt(spec, usage=TRUE))
  q(status=1)
}

#set some reasonable defaults for the options that are needed,
#but were not specified.
if ( is.null(opt$mean    ) ) { opt$mean    = 0     }
if ( is.null(opt$sd      ) ) { opt$sd      = 1     }
if ( is.null(opt$count   ) ) { opt$count   = 10    }
if ( is.null(opt$verbose ) ) { opt$verbose = FALSE }

#print some progress messages to stderr, if requested.
if ( opt$verbose ) { write("writing...",stderr()) }

#do some operation based on user input.
cat(paste(rnorm(opt$count,mean=opt$mean,sd=opt$sd),collapse="\n"))
cat("\n")

#signal success and exit.
q(status=0)