[Python-Dev] PEP 389: argparse - new command line parsing module

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On 09/29/2009 04:38 PM, Steven Bethard wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Glenn Linderman <v+python at g.nevcal.com> wrote:
>> On approximately 9/29/2009 1:57 PM, came the following characters from the
>> keyboard of Steven Bethard:
>>> If you're not using argparse to write command line applications, then
>>> I don't feel bad if you have to do a tiny bit of extra work to take
>>> care of that use case. In this particular situation, all you have to
>>> do is subclass ArgumentParser and override exit() to do whatever you
>>> think it should do.
> [snip]
>>> There is only a single method in argparse that prints things,
>>> _print_message(). So if you want it to do something else, you can
>>> simply override it in a subclass. I can make that method public if
>>> this is a common use case.
>>
>> Documenting both of these options would forestall people from thinking it is
>> only useful for console applications.
> 
> I'm totally fine with people thinking it is only useful for console
> applications. That's what it's intended for. That said, if there are
> people out there who want to use it for other applications, I'm happy
> to make things easier for them if I know concretely what they want.
> 
Note: on Unix systems, --help should still print to the terminal, not
pop up a GUI text box with the help information.  So being able to
override the behaviour might be good but it is more than a simple, GUI
vs console distinction.  Are we talking about anything else than --help
output (for the printing question)?

About exit(), I agree with others about wanting to catch the exception
myself and then choosing to exit from the code.  I'm not sure that it's
actually useful in practice, though...it might just feel cleaner but not
actually be that helpful.

-Toshio

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