PEP proposal optparse

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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