What is the purpose of 'set -- $args' after getopt?

Question

The usual example for using getopt in bash is as follow

args=`getopt abo: $*`
errcode=$?
set -- $args

What does that last line achieve?

Answer 1

This explains it very well. Essentially, it is to break a single argument with multiple flags into multiple arguments each with single flag:

Whether you call your script as

script -ab

or as

script -a -b

after the set -- $args, $1 will be -a and $2 will be -b. It makes processing easier.

BTW, getopts is much better