OPTARG not being set?

[Sweth Chandramouli <sweth@astaroth.nit.gwu.edu>]

	i have a function that i use to set any PATH-style variables,
which checks each token to be added to the pseudo-array to see if it
is already present, and also to see if it actually exists as a 
directory, before adding it.  by default, it takes its input and tries
to add it to PATH; since i originally wrote it for the korn shell
many years ago, before i knew about getopts, i had it use an ugly
if-then clause to accept a command-line argument of '-p VARIABLE'
so that it could be used to set other variables (like MANPATH,
LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc.).  i've finally gotten around to cleaning it
up, and as part of that, am trying to use getopts to set the
name of the variable to be set; i'm missing something, however,
because now it doesn't work.

	this is the start of the function:

unset USER_SPECIFIED_PATH;
while getopts ":p" CMD_LINE_OPT ; do
   case ${CMD_LINE_OPT} in
      p  ) USER_SPECIFIED_PATH=${OPTARG};;
      \? ) print "unknown option \"-${OPTARG}\""
           print 'usage: '
           print 'addpath [-p PSEUDO_ARRAY] first_item:second_item:...:nth_item'
           return 1
   esac;
done;

	after this loop finishes, however, USER_SPECIFIED_PATH is still
null.  i've put some echo statements in the case clause for option p,
which confirm that OPTARG is never being set, even though CMD_LINE_OPT
is matching 'p'.  does anyone have any idea why?

	thanks,
	sweth, who is still interested in maybe working on a proposal
for the zsh book, but is for now just cleaning up and commenting all
of his startup files to put on a web page.

-- 
Sweth Chandramouli
IS Coordinator, The George Washington University
<sweth@gwu.edu> / (202) 994 - 8521 (V) / (202) 994 - 0458 (F)
<a href="http://astaroth.nit.gwu.edu/~sweth/disc.html">*</a>