getopt: where's da dicts?????

[Thomas A. Bryan]

Les Schaffer wrote:
> 
> just started using the getopt module. i was surprised to see it
> returns the options in list format rather than perl's (better)
> dictionary format.
> 
> i thought i read on c.l.p many moons ago about someone who had written
> an add-on to getopt to return a dict of options a la perl. but i found
> nothing in deja news for this.

Perhaps you're thinking of DPyGetOpt.

It provides features similar to those of Perl's
GetOpt::Long.  I really wish that something like
this were in the standard Python library.  I have 
no idea what it would take to get such a module 
added, but it's something that I *often* miss.

http://www.python.org/ftp/python/contrib/System/DPyGetOpt.py

It's pretty easy to use:

from DPyGetOpt import DPyGetOpt
import sys
optObject = DPyGetOpt(['foo|bar=s','baz','tim:i','peters'])
optObject.processArguments(sys.argv)
# Now, optObject.optionValues is a dict of option->value
# optObject.freeValues is the portion of argv unprocessed
# and optObject even has methods for querying the 
# option dictionary

is-it-too-late-to-make-the-python-1.5.3-release?-ly yours

---Tom

P.S.  I'm even willing to help recode an options module 
such as DPyGetOpt according to whatever specs are necessary
to get it into the library.