From a personal email:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not signed up for all the Python issue tracking stuff, but thought I'd let you know about a problem with the argparse doc page:

     http://docs.python.org/library/argparse.html

It says at the end:

     Replace options, args = parser.parse_args() with args = parser.parse_args() and add additional ArgumentParser.add_argument() calls for the positional arguments.

But I think it should be options = parser.parse_args(), not args.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

They're not options, so I don't like encouraging people to continue to call them options, but the docs should at least make clear that the namespace object that used to be called "options" is now called "args".

Hi Steven, I'm not exactly getting what you're meaning here: are you actually saying to replace every occurrence of 'option' with 'argument' in the whole argparse module doc, or just make it stronger in the mentioned line that what was called previously 'option' is now called 'args' ?

PS: wouldn't it be better to use this form "(options, args) = parser.parse_args()" instead of "options, args = parser.parse_args()" ? optparse doc uses the former, so it should be easy to recognize for those willing to migrate to argparse

The request was for the latter: "just make it stronger in the mentioned line that what was called previously 'option' is now called 'args'".

As far as adding the parentheses or not, I never once used the parentheses back when I was using optparse, so it didn't even strike me to put them in there. But you're right - the optparse docs do that, so I'm fine if you'd like to make the argparse discussion of optparse match up better with the optparse docs.

I've prepared a simple patch: what do you think about it?

now even with patch attached :)

Looks good to me. This is a doc fix, so it could go into 3.2 and 2.7 as well as 3.3.

New changeset dee1597b3ce3 by R David Murray in branch '3.2':
#10423: clarify options vs args in argparse discussion of optparse
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/dee1597b3ce3

New changeset 7ad1728691b2 by R David Murray in branch 'default':
Merge #10423: clarify options vs args in argparse discussion of optparse
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/7ad1728691b2

New changeset cb5214e6c287 by R David Murray in branch '2.7':
#10423: clarify options vs args in argparse discussion of optparse
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/cb5214e6c287