##### 25.3.12.1 Parsing of Suboptions

Having a single level of options is sometimes not enough. There might be too many options which have to be available or a set of options is closely related.

For this case some programs use suboptions. One of the most prominent programs is certainly `mount`(8). The `-o` option take one argument which itself is a comma separated list of options. To ease the programming of code like this the function `getsubopt` is available.

— Function: int getsubopt (char **optionp, char *const *tokens, char **valuep)

> The optionp parameter must be a pointer to a variable containing the address of the string to process. When the function returns the reference is updated to point to the next suboption or to the terminating ‘`\0`’ character if there is no more suboption available.

> The tokens parameter references an array of strings containing the known suboptions. All strings must be ‘`\0`’ terminated and to mark the end a null pointer must be stored. When `getsubopt` finds a possible legal suboption it compares it with all strings available in the tokens array and returns the index in the string as the indicator.

> In case the suboption has an associated value introduced by a ‘`=`’ character, a pointer to the value is returned in valuep. The string is ‘`\0`’ terminated. If no argument is available valuep is set to the null pointer. By doing this the caller can check whether a necessary value is given or whether no unexpected value is present.

> In case the next suboption in the string is not mentioned in the tokens array the starting address of the suboption including a possible value is returned in valuep and the return value of the function is ‘`-1`’.