Changes in version 1.21.1 (2026-04-27)                 

Breaking changes

  - You can now store negative numbers like -12 even when storage mode
    is not "double" or "integer" (e.g. when storage mode is "character"
    or "complex"). If the option's action is "store_optional" with a
    storage mode other than "double" or "integer" we will now store such
    negative numbers instead of treating them as a short flag bundle and
    if the option's action is "store" we will store such negative
    numbers instead of throwing an error.
  - For long flags the storage mode column of spec now only casts any
    taken argument values to the requested storage mode. In particular
    store_true now never casts to the requested storage mode and
    store_optional only casts to the requested storage mode when the
    optional argument value is present and taken. This was the
    documented behaviour and the previous/current behavior for short
    flags.

New features

  - getopt() now has support for positional arguments (operands) (#2):
    
      - getopt() now has an operand argument that controls how
        positional arguments (operands) are handled:
        
          - "after--only" (the default) only collects operands that
            appear after a "--" separator.
          - "strict" (in addition to operands that appear after a "--"
            separator) collects tokens that do not look like flags and
            were not consumed as a flag argument, while still erroring
            on unrecognized flags.
        
        Any positional arguments are returned in the "operand" attribute
        of the output.
    
      - New getoperand() function to extract the positional arguments
        (operands) stored in the "operand" attribute of output of
        getopt().

  - getopt() and getusage() now support action strings in column 3 of
    spec (#11):
    
      - "append" appends each argument to a vector each time the flag is
        used.
      - "count" stores integer count of each time the flag is used.
      - "store" stores argument value, legacy 1 supported as an alias.
      - "store_false" stores FALSE.
      - "store_optional" stores argument value if present otherwise
        stores TRUE, legacy 2 supported as an alias.
      - "store_true" stores TRUE, legacy 0 supported as an alias.

  - New getfile() function returns name of calling script, it is an
    alias of pre-existing get_Rscript_filename().

  - New getusage() function generates a usage string from a getopt spec
    matrix.

Bug fixes and minor improvements

  - getfile() now also checks the LITTLER_SCRIPT_PATH environment
    variable so it works when called from littler (#16).
  - The spec argument of getopt() and getusage() may now also be a 4-5
    column data frame (which will be silently coerced to a matrix).
  - The list returned by getopt() is now of S3 class "getopt" and no
    longer contains an character(0L) ARGS element.

                 Changes in version 1.20.4 (2023-10-01)                 

  - Documentation tweaks eliminating a CRAN check NOTE.
  - {covr} is no longer a "suggested" package in the DESCRIPTION file.

                 Changes in version 1.20.3 (2019-03-22)                 

  - Now by default getopt() won't override a user specified opt argument
    if argv is in the global environment. Will continue to use argv as a
    default for opt if it is in the global environment and the user does
    not specify an opt argument (for littler compatibility).

                 Changes in version 1.20.2 (2018-02-16)                 

  - Now allows one to pass an empty string to a character option. Thanks
    Matthew Flickinger for bug report.

                 Changes in version 1.20.1 (2017-11-29)                 

  - Now explicitly imports the na.omit() method from the stats package.
    Thanks Derrick Oswald for bug report.
  - Improved parsing for negative numbers preceded by a space instead of
    a '=' sign. Thanks Roman Zenka for improved regular expression.
  - Slightly more informative error message if storage.mode() coercion
    results in an NA. Thanks Roman Zenka for suggestion.

                 Changes in version 1.20.0 (2013-08-30)                 

  - Type of "numeric" in spec automatically cast to "double". Previously
    users might have had an error passing negative numbers if they
    accidentally specified "numeric" instead of "double".
  - Project website moved to https://github.com/trevorld/getopt
  - Exports new function sort_list().

                 Changes in version 1.19.1 (2013-03-04)                 

  - If a passed in option matches multiple options in the getopt
    specification but matches one exactly then getopt now uses that
    value instead of throwing a "long flag is ambiguous" error.

                 Changes in version 1.19.0 (2012-11-18)                 

  - Exports new function get_Rscript_filename() that returns name of
    calling script, {getopt} now uses this function value as default for
    command argument.
  - Documentation improved and now highlights differences between
    {getopt} and {optparse} packages for new undecided users.