How to read/process command line arguments?

Question

I am originally a C programmer. I have seen numerous tricks and \"hacks\" to read many different arguments.

What are some of the ways Python programmers can do this

Answer 1

I use optparse myself, but really like the direction Simon Willison is taking with his recently introduced optfunc library. It works by:

"introspecting a function definition (including its arguments and their default values) and using that to construct a command line argument parser."

So, for example, this function definition:

def geocode(s, api_key='', geocoder='google', list_geocoders=False):

is turned into this optparse help text:

    Options:
      -h, --help            show this help message and exit
      -l, --list-geocoders
      -a API_KEY, --api-key=API_KEY
      -g GEOCODER, --geocoder=GEOCODER