optparse alternative

[Michael Hoffman]

Henry Ludemann wrote:

> I've been writing an optparse alternative (using getopt) that is at a
> stage where I'd be interested in people's opinions.

Thanks for the work and letting us see it!

As far as I can tell, your module has one functional advantage over
optparse--it validates arguments as well as options. The rest seems to
be cosmetics, and personally I prefer the cosmetics of optparse. For
one thing, it uses the variable/function naming style found throughout
most of the stdlib. optparse has also been widely used and tested for
the last four years.

I think you would be better off trying to extend optparse to deal with
non-option arguments, and you can tap into the installed base of
existing optparse users and even get your code included in the stdlib
if Greg Ward agrees. Whereas that's really unlikely for an entirely
new module--there just isn't the need for a THIRD way to do the same
thing.

Just a suggestion.
-- 
Michael Hoffman