[getopt-sig] Random thoughts

[Greg Ward]

On 15 February 2002, dittmar@snafu.de said:
> Thought 2
> 
> Would the following be a violation of 
> "explicit is better than implicit" or an application of
> "don't repeat yourself"?
> Optik:
> the default for "dest" is the value of the 
> long option without '--'

Someone else already suggested that, and I'm open to it.  I just peeked
at the code and it should be easy to slip in.

> the default for "type" is deduced from the type of the "default" value

No, that's too sneaky and implicit.  I don't like it.

However, I am thinking of making the default type "string" -- ie. if
Optik expected a type (action="store" or action="append" or dest
supplied), and you didn't give one, it assumes type="string".  That's
also implicit behaviour, so potentially unPythonic.  But it's awfully
convenient, since most options are string options.  Opinions?

> Thought 3
> 
> Should there be support for more sources of arguments?
> * @filename in argument list => will expand contents of
>     filename into argument list

No.  If you want this, implement an OptionParser subclass.  If that's
painful, let me know how OptionParser needs to be refactored.

> * Optik (env = varname) will prepend additional options from
>     os.environ.get (varname, ''), it's the name of a 
>     environment variable and not a string because
>     that name should be generated into the documentation

Maaaaybe, but I'm cool to it.  Same advice as above.

Basically, I want to stop adding features to Optik.  If you want a
feature, implement it by subclassing.  If subclassing is painful, then
refactoring is called for and I want to hear about it.

> Thought 6
> 
> One application of 'optional argument to option':
> script --log=x.log   writes to x.log
> script --log         writes to default-file-name
> script               writes no log

Yeah, good example -- easier to grasp then my Distutils example.

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - programmer-at-large                         gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
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