I haven't specifically looked at Optik, but if another option parser is going to be added to the standard lib, there is one thing I'd like it to have which the getopt module currently doesn't: Support for optional arguments. That is, the ability to specify that an option *may* have an argument, and not just that it either must or can't have an argument. I find this limitation in getopt very frustrating. -- http://tmda.sourceforge.net/