[Python-Dev] getopt helper?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> [Mark]
> > > > > Basically _every_ time I use getopt, I write code like this:
> 
> [Marc-Andre]
> > > > Why not just add a higher level interface ? Something
> > > > like CommandLine.py which is included in mxDateTime ?
> 
> [Mark]
> > > Because _every_ time I use getopt, I write code like that :-)
> 
> [Marc-Andre]
> > I wrote the CommandLine.py for pretty much the same reason:
> 
> Marc-Andre, you're not hearing what Mark is saying.  He wants a change
> to the standard library, and he knows that small additions to existing
> modules there stand a better chance of adoption than new modules.

Oh, I did get the idea... just wanted to plug my module here in a
take-it-or-leave-it way ;-) I usually put such things into
my lib/ dir for Python to find -- no need to make them a standard.

> I personally liked the idea of getoptex() best, except I would call it
> getopt_or_die().  If the usage message is omitted it can synthesize
> one from the (short and long) options arguments and sys.argv[0] (the
> latter being a bit controversial, but it's just a default).
> 
> Hmm...  Perhaps getopt_or_die() shouldn't take the args argument but
> extract sys.argv[1:] itself?

Better not: it's sometimes very useful to call the main(args) function
of a script in interactive mode which then passes the args list to
getopt(). How about adding something like:

def getoptex(...,args=None,helptext='Read the source, Luke ;-)'):
   if args is None: args = sys.argv[1:]
   ...

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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