I've been writing an optparse alternative (using getopt) that is at a stage where I'd be interested in people's opinions. It allows you to easily creating command line interfaces to existing functions, using flags (which are optional) and arguments. It will automatically print a nicely formatted usage (eg: -h or --help), and easily & automatically validates parameter existence and type.
You can download it, and read a bit more about it, at <http://hl.id.au/Projects/CommandLine/> I'm interested in comments and criticisms; I've tried to write it according to the python coding guildlines. Example usage of a cmdline usage; $ python test.py --help Usage: test.py [OPTIONS] SOMEARG An example to show usage of command line Arguments SOMEARG Some float argument Mandatory arguments to long flags are mandatory for short options too -h, --help Show this help page -s, --setflag Set the flag Email bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Source for the above example; def someFunc(someArg, someFlag = False): print "Flag value =", someFlag print "Arg value =", someArg from cmdline.Command import Command command = Command(someFunc, "An example to show usage of command line", "Email bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED]") command.addFlag('s', 'setflag', 'Set the flag', 'someFlag') command.addArgument('SOMEARG', 'Some float argument', 'someArg', float) command.invoke() Normal use of test.py would have given $ python test.py 3 Flag value = False Arg value = 3.0 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list