[Python-Dev] Python 2.7b1 and argparse's version action

[Ben Finney]

Tobias Herp <Tobias.Herp at gmx.de> writes:

> Steven Bethard schrieb:
> > On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 3:52 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> >> Steven Bethard <steven.bethard <at> gmail.com> writes:
> >>> Note that even though I agree with you that "-v/--version" is
> >>> probably not the best choice, in the poll[2] 11% of people still
> >>> wanted this.
> >>
> >> This strikes me as a small minority.
> > 
> > Agreed, but it's also the current behavior, ...
>
> The current /broken, non-standard/ behaviour.

I think that is overstating your case.

Steven is pointing out the fact that “default to ‘-v’ and ‘--version’”
is the current behaviour for argparse. It's also a fact that argparse,
as a third-party library, has an existing user base, and changing this
behaviour incompatibly is not something to do lightly.

To call this behaviour “broken” is a stretch too far, IMO. It does break
compatibility with optparse, but it's not *inherently* broken as the
above would imply.

Nor is there really a standard for this behaviour to be measured
“non-standard”. At best, there is a strong convention among Unix
command-line programs of ‘--version’ for a version action and ‘-v’ for
enabling verbose output. But that convention is not normative, so it's
too much to call it a standard IMO.

> I have collected lots of examples of widely used programs and their
> options. The only example of '-v', '--verbose' is argparse.

I'm not sure what programs you're talking about (argparse is a library,
not a program that can be run by itself), but in a brief search of my
system I've found several programs that use ‘-v’ for a version action,
including among others:

* Info-ZIP's ‘zip’ and ‘unzip’
* GNU ‘fdisk’
* Vim's ‘xxd’
* W3C's ‘tidy’

These are certainly widely deployed, although they may not be widely
familiar.

I do agree that such programs are a small minority, but it's overstating
your case to call them “non-standard”, since there's no standard for
this, or “broken”, since they demonstrably work fine. Rather, they buck
what is certainly a firm convention to avoid ‘-v’ for a version option.

I'm certainly in favour of preserving that convention by avoiding use of
‘-v’ for version. I would rather, though, that the discussion remain
aware of facts and not descend into hyperbole.

-- 
 \        “Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear |
  `\   than I who receive it.” —Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake by |
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Ben Finney