[Greg Stein]
Note that a general -Dkey=value option would be quite nice. They could all end in sys.startoptions or somesuch.
Jython calls it sys.registry: Jython 2.1b1 on java1.4.0-beta (JIT: null) Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
import sys sys.registry {python.path=d:\python\Python211\Lib}
After the -D switches are processed, the startup code can look in the dictionary for "division" to determine what to do.
sys.startoptions would be a generalized way to pass parameters into subsystems which otherwise have no control of the command line. (Apache 2.0 uses this to pass params to the modules which handle request processing) By using sys.startoptions, it would also be portable to systems which don't usually use a command line (Windows, Mac, GUIs, etc); they could potentially get those options from the registry or whatever.
Jython reads such options from the files "${sys.prefix}/registry" and "${HOME}/.jython" in addition to the -D options on the command line. regards, finn