[getopt-sig] there isn't really any discussion here

[Tim Peters]

[Russ Cox]
> ...
> It's not clear that one group is right and one group is wrong.

It doesn't even matter if one group *is* right and the other wrong:  the
only thing this SIG has to decide is which way is most Pythonic.
Unfortunately, that's harder than distinguishing good from evil <wink>.

> I think it's basically a difference of opinion about what constitutes
> the best approach to the problem.  Unfortunately I don't see any good
> way to sate both groups simultaneously.

We don't have to:  it's quite Pythonic to pick a winner, then move on.

Your approach is elegant to the point of transparency.  That's very
Pythonic.

OTOH, uniformity is supremely Pythonic, and Optik has several advantages
there:

+ Every Optik client generates the same kind of error msgs for a variety
  of errors (like missing argument, or unrecognized option name).  This
  is also true of getopt() clients, and is a real help to end users
  (they're not really fascinated by endless variations in common error
  messages).

+ Whenever Optik takes care of string-to-whatever conversion, "the
  rules" for exactly what can be converted and how it's done are the
  same across clients.  So saying, e.g., "integer argument" has a well-
  defined meaning across clients.  Also true of getopt clients, and
  again it's also valuable to have uniformity across programs in how
  failing conversions get reported.

+ Optik supplies policy for how options and argument values get
  reported back to you (as attributes of an object).  Current practice
  is a mess, storing option existence flags and argument values in as
  many diverse ways as getopt-loop authors have been able to dream up.
  This makes it harder to follow other peoples' code, and offering
  too much choice in what should be dull-as-dirt boilerplate code is
  downright anti-pythonic.  So are long function argument lists and/or
  masses of global variables.  People *should* often set up objects
  to carry options around, but laziness stops them.  Optik all but
  forces them into better practice, and that's quite appealing to
  the Pythonic mind.

+ Auto-generating a help msg in a uniform-across-clients way is also
  a value.  Ditto forcing all clients to have the same meaning for -h.

OTOH, everything else in Optik is useless fluff <wink>.