[getopt-sig] Recent changes in Optik

[Greg Ward]

On 17 February 2002, I said:
> based on some of the feedback and requests seen in the past week, I've
> made some minor changes to Optik that, I think, will make it even easier
> to use.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the other changes I've been making.
Specifically, I've added an "examples" directory to the Optik CVS (will
be included in the next release) where I can play around with
implementing those features that people request but that I don't want to
add to Optik proper.  This forces me to actually test that Optik is
really as easily as extensible as I claim it is, and gives everyone else
canonical implementations of those heretical features.

So far, I've implemented a case-insensitive option parser and two
variations on "required options".  Surprise surprise, each new example
has resulted in minor tweaks to Optik -- specifically the OptionParser
constructor -- to make it easier to extend.  For example, with the code
currently in CVS, a case-insensitive option parser is pretty easy:

  class CaselessOptionParser (OptionParser):

      def _create_option_list (self):
          self.option_list = []
          self._short_opt = caseless_dict()
          self._long_opt = caseless_dict()
          self._long_opts = []
          self.defaults = {}

      def _match_long_opt (self, opt):
          return _match_abbrev(opt.lower(), self._long_opt.keys())

(The implementation of caseless_dict is left as an exercise to the
reader.  Or check out the current Optik CVS and see
examples/caseless.py.)

I invite everyone to take a check out the current Optik CVS and poke
around the examples directory.  If nothing else, this will serve as a
place to send people who ask for features that I don't think belong in
Optik proper.

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - Unix nerd                                   gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
"Question authority!"  "Oh yeah?  Says who?"