A little thought I have had a few times now, so it is time to pass it on for comment. Basically _every_ time I use getopt, I write code like this: import getopt try: opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "slc:d:e:") except getopt.error, why: print why print usage % (os.path.basename(sys.argv[0],)) sys.exit(1) Every single time. I have never used getopt without this code. How about we put this functionality into getopt itself? It could be triggered either by adding a new "usage" param defaulting to None, or by adding a new entry point. ie: opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "slc:d:e:", usage=usage) or opts, args = getopt.getoptex(sys.argv[1:], "slc:d:e:", usage=usage) I know it is fairly trivial, but IMO is such a useful module and the pattern is used so regularly that is seems to make sense to add it. Any thoughts? If it is seen favourably, how should we spell it? Mark.