On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 6:18 PM, Nick Coghlan
Keeping getopt around *and* including a "add_getopt_arguments" method in argparse is probably the best of both worlds, in that it allows for relatively straightforward evolution of an application:
1. Start with getopt 2. As the getopt argument parsing gets twisty and arcane and maintaining the help string becomes a nightmare, move to argparse with the "add_getopt_arguments" method. 3. Over time, convert more arguments to proper argparse arguments with full documentation.
One thing that wouldn't be good in this transition is that "add_getopt_arguments" can only generate the part of the help string that says "-a" and "--author" exist as options -- it can't add the additional bit of text that says what they do because that's not provided to the getopt API. I suspect this makes the transition less convenient because with getopt you were probably already manually maintaining a usage message that had at least some of this information, and switching to "add_getopt_arguments" would mean throwing this information away. Steve -- Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis? Did Steve tell you that? --- The Hiphopopotamus