optparse - required options

[Steve Holden]

Steven Bethard wrote:
> Omari Norman wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 20, 2007 at 05:31:00PM -0400, Jay Loden wrote:
>>> Robert Dailey wrote:
>>>> Well, I don't know what is wrong with people then. I don't see how
>>>> required arguments are of bad design.
>>> I tend to agree...while "required option" may be an oxymoron in
>>> English, I can think of quite a few scripts I've written myself (in
>>> various languages) that needed at least some kind of user input to
>>> operate.
>> The idea with optparse is not that programs should not require certain
>> information on the command line; rather, the idea is that this
>> information should be positional arguments, not 'options'.
>>
>> That is, to use the compiler example:
>>
>> compiler file
>>
>> is preferred if a file argument is necessary.
>>
>> compiler --file file
>>
>> is not preferred.
> 
> I agree with the optparse philosophy, but Practicality Beats Purity. 
> That's why I was convinced to add "required options" to argparse -- 
> there are too many applications that want that kind of interface.
> *I* don't write applications with interfaces like that, but enough 
> people do that the use case should really be supported.
> 
Well, here's to software producers who listen to their users!

regards
  Steve
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