Re: PEP proposal optparse
- From: "James Nicolson" <jlnicolson@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:02:07 +0200
Perhaps it is better to keep descriptions short and store longer
descriptions elsewhere, but there are many programs that have long
descriptions, for example try: ls --help (at least on my machine a lot
of these descriptions are quite long).
2008/9/18 James Mills <prologic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Hi James,.
I can't say I really agree with your
proposal. I tend to keep the help
descriptions of my options short
and concise and to the point.
Also, one must use the language's
features (indentation) to your advantage,
as doing so ensure readability.
For example (from my bhimport tool):
<snippet>
def parse_options():
"""parse_options() -> opts, args
Parse any command-line options given returning both
the parsed options and arguments.
"""
parser = optparse.OptionParser(usage=USAGE, version=VERSION)
parser.add_option("", "--date-format",
action="store",type="str", default="%d/%m/%Y",
dest="dateFormat",
help="date format string")
parser.add_option("", "--time-format",
action="store", type="str", default="%H:%M:%S",
dest="timeFormat",
help="time format string")
parser.add_option("", "--datetime-format",
action="store", type="str", default="%H:%M:%S %d/%m/%Y",
dest="datetimeFormat",
help="datetime format string")
opts, args = parser.parse_args()
if len(args) < 2:
parser.print_help()
raise SystemExit, 1
return opts, args
</snippet>
As you can see (as long as you're
reading this in fixed-width fonts)
it _is_ very readable.
cheers
James
On 9/18/08, James <jlnicolson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi,
I would like to know your thoughts on a proposed change to optparse
that I have planned. It is possible to add default values to multiple
options using the set_defaults. However, when adding descriptions to
options the developer has to specify it in each add_option() call.
This results in unreadable code such as:
parser.add_option('-q', '--quiet' , action="store_false",
dest='verbose',
help = 'Output less information')
parser.add_option('-o', '--output' , type='string',
dest='castordir' , metavar='<DIR>' ,
help = 'specify the wanted CASTOR directory where to store the
results tarball')
parser.add_option('-r', '--prevrel' , type='string',
dest='previousrel' , metavar='<DIR>' ,
help = 'Top level dir of previous release for regression
analysis' )
The same code could become much more readable if there was an
equivalent method of set_defaults for the description/help of the
option. The same code could then become:
parser.set_description(
verbose = 'Output less information',
castordir = 'specify the wanted CASTOR directory where
to store the results tarball',
previousrel = 'Top level dir of previous release for
regression analysis')
parser.add_option('-q', '--quiet' , action="store_false",
dest='verbose')
parser.add_option('-o', '--output' , type='string',
dest='castordir' , metavar='<DIR>' )
parser.add_option('-r', '--prevrel' , type='string',
dest='previousrel' , metavar='<DIR>' )
Help descriptions can often be quite long and separating them in this
fashion would, IMHO, be desirable.
Kind Regards,
James Nicolson
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