We haven't been told what operating system or shell are being used for these tests, but if we use bash, ksh, sh, or zsh on macOS with the BSD based getopt utility available on that system (which says it was designed to behave the same as the Bell Labs getopt utility I described in post #3 in this thread), the command:

Code:

OPTS=`getopt -o r:hb::x: -l exclude: -l branch::  -l help -l version -- "$@"`

would set OPTS to:

Code:

 -- r:hb::x: -l exclude: -l branch:: -l help -l version -- -r test

if the script is invoked with the command:

Code:

./script.sh -r test

and after the command:

Code:

eval set -- "$OPTS"

is run, the positional parameters will be set to:

Code:

$1="--"
$2="r:hb::x:"
$3="-l"
$4="exclude:"
$5="-l"
$6="branch::"
$7="-l"
$8="help"
$9="-l"
${10}="version"
${11}="--"
${12}="-r"
${13}="test"

There are lots of things wrong with the script that has been posted for discussion in this thread many of which have already been mentioned at least once.

Instead of what this getopt utility is doing, to make the following while loop work correctly getopt with the shown arguments would have to return the string:

Code:

-r test --

instead of:

Code:

 -- r:hb::x: -l exclude: -l branch:: -l help -l version -- -r test

Rather than trying to understand how this script works, you would be much better off taking the time to learn how to rewrite the script using getopts (perhaps using suggestions in the thread How to Use getopts with longoptions? from a couple of years ago as a starting point).