Issue5555
Created on 2009-03-24 18:01 by ajs, last changed 2009-07-01 17:29 by ajs. This issue is now closed.
Messages (3) | |||
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msg84103 - (view) | Author: Aaron Sherman (ajs) | Date: 2009-03-24 18:01 | |
First off, I want to be clear that this isn't a request for changes to functionality, nor for debate over decisions which have already been made. This is purely a request for correction to mis-statements about the nature and origins of optparse's handling in its documentation. This is an edited-down excerpt form the optparse documentation from: http://docs.python.org/library/optparse.html "... the traditional Unix syntax is a hyphen (“-“) followed by a single letter [...] Some other option syntaxes that the world has seen include: * a hyphen followed by a few letters, e.g. "-pf" [...] [...] These option syntaxes are not supported by optparse, and they never will be. This is deliberate: the first three are non-standard on any environment[...]" While, obviously, optparse is free to choose whatever model of option parsing the developers like, the above text should be removed or corrected. Traditional Unix command-line usage is detailed in the POSIX specification's definition of various utilities and the optparse C function as documented here: http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/getopt.html which lays out this example: "This code accepts any of the following as equivalent: cmd -ao arg path path cmd -a -o arg path path" Note that the concatenation of single-character arguments is, in fact, in conformance to the POSIX standard, GNU coding conventions, and Unix best-practices since at least the mid-1980s. This clearly contradicts the statement from Python's documentation. For further reference, see: any Unix or Unix-like system's "man 3 getopt" http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch10s05.html http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Command_002dLine-Interfaces (which refers back to the "POSIX guidelines for the command-line options of a program") any Unix or Unix-like system's man pages for a plethora of core utilities such as rm(1), ls(1), sh(1), cp(1), etc. A more accurate statement would be: "optparse has chosen to implement a subset of the GNU coding standard's command line interface guidelines, allowing for both long and short options, but not the POSIX-style concatenation of short options." A rationale for that decision may or may not be included, but I won't presume to write it since I'm not actually privy to that decision-making process. |
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msg89960 - (view) | Author: Greg Ward (gward) ![]() |
Date: 2009-07-01 00:43 | |
> This is an edited-down excerpt form the optparse documentation from: > > http://docs.python.org/library/optparse.html > > "... the traditional Unix syntax is a hyphen (“-“) followed by a > single letter [...] Some other option syntaxes that the world has seen include: > * a hyphen followed by a few letters, e.g. "-pf" [...] Note that the second "[...]" expands to "(this is *not* the same as multiple options merged into a single argument)". Which means: 1) optparse *does* implement the traditional Unix option-munging that has been around since at least the mid-1980s 2) the proposed statement "optparse has chosen to implement a subset of the GNU coding standard's command line interface guidelines, allowing for both long and short options, but not the POSIX-style concatenation of short options." is false Offhand, I don't see a way for the documentation to be any clearer. Maybe an example of "-a" and "-b" munged to "-ab"? |
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msg89993 - (view) | Author: Aaron Sherman (ajs) | Date: 2009-07-01 17:29 | |
I'm closing this out, as the previous poster was correct: the module does the right thing, and I misread the documentation. Thanks! |
History | |||
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Date | User | Action | Args |
2009-07-01 17:29:06 | ajs | set | status: open -> closed messages: + msg89993 |
2009-07-01 00:44:53 | gward | set | title: optparse -> optparse: clarify option concatenation in docs |
2009-07-01 00:43:56 | gward | set | messages: + msg89960 |
2009-06-27 23:57:50 | ezio.melotti | set | priority: low nosy: + gward |
2009-03-24 18:01:13 | ajs | create |