[Python-Dev] argparse ugliness

[Neal Becker]

On Monday 08 March 2010, David Stanek wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Steven Bethard
> 
> <steven.bethard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In argparse, unlike optparse, actions are actually defined by objects
> > with a particular API, and the string is just a shorthand for
> > referring to that. So:
> > 
> >  parser.add_argument ('--plot', action='store_true')
> > 
> > is equivalent to:
> > 
> >  parser.add_argument('--plot', argparse._StoreTrueAction)
> > 
> > Because the names are so long and you'd have to import them, I've left
> > them as private attributes of the module, but if there's really
> > demand, we could rename them to argparse.StoreTrueAction, etc.
> 
> Any reason not to do something like:
> 
>   from argparse import actions
>   ...
>   parser.add_argument('--plot', actions.store_true)
> 
> Basically a small namespace for the constants.
+1