Re: Which shell and how to get started handling arguments

 James Harris <james.harris.1@gmail.com>:

I read up on getopts but from tests it seems to require that switches precede arguments >

 Yes, that's true.

rather than allowing them to be specified after, so that doesn't seem very good, either. >

 The problem with specifying options after non‐option arguments is  that non‐option arguments may take any form:  They even may start  with an "-", that is, look like options even when they aren't  meant to be used as options.  So, if you have some command "some_command" with one non‐option  argument "a" followed by an option "-b"     $ some_command -a -b
 and parse the arguments from left to right then there is no way  for "some_command" to investigate that "-a" is to be taken as a  non‐option argument while "-b" is to be taken as an option.  Whereas, when "some_command" expects options before any  non‐option argument and recognizes the end‐of‐options marker  ("--") then there is no ambiguity:    $ some_command -b -- -a
 "-b" is an option, while "-a" (because the series of options is  terminated by the end‐of‐options marker) is the (first)  non‐option argument "-a".  That's the way how the POSIX‐shell builtin "getopts" works.