[Python-Dev] PEP 389: argparse - new command line parsing module (original) (raw)

Cameron Simpson cs at zip.com.au
Mon Sep 28 23:44:50 CEST 2009

On 27Sep2009 21:24, Steven Bethard <steven.bethard at gmail.com> wrote: | On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 9:09 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote: | >> If you think getopt and optparse should stick around in 3.X, why is | >> that? If you think there are things that getopt and optparse do better | >> than argparse, could you please give some examples? | > | > I personally consider getopt superior to both optparse and argparse. | > Those are terribly verbose in specifying arguments, whereas getopt's | > sequence-of-letters is really nice and compact. || Thanks for the concrete example. Although I'm unconvinced that the | characters you save in the sequence of letters in the getopt.getopt | call aren't afterwards wasted on type conversions, if/else statements | and variable assignments in the subsequent loop, it would be pretty | simple to add to argparse something like:: || ArgumentParser.addgetoptarguments(options[, longoptions])

Yes please!

I'm also very fond of the succinct getopt sequence-of-letters style; it works really well for the simple cases.

Disclaimer: I've not used the optparse et al modules because getopt has covered my needs and my C background made getopt the natural module to start with. I have written simple getopt-equivalent option parsers a number of times though. (Of course, that choice also drives me to adapt my option wishes to stuff that getopt can do:-)

Clarification: this isn't a vote for preferring getopt, it's a vote for availability of the sequence-of-letters style.

Cheers,

Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743 http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

The most annoying thing about being without my files after our disc crash was discovering once again how widespread BLINK was on the web.

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