<h2>Python Getopt SIG</h2>

<p>The purpose of this SIG was to come up with a new and improved library for command-line parsing in Python 2.3. Everybody seems to agree that the venerable <code>getopt</code> module just doesn't do enough. The trick is to find something that is sufficiently powerful and flexible without being too complex to use, especially for novice programmers. </p>

<p>The SIG was kicked off shortly after David Goodger and Greg Ward (your humble narrator and champion of this SIG) independently proposed adding <a href="http://optik.sourceforge.net/">Optik</a> to the standard library. This kicked off <a href="http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2002-February/019934.html">a brief thread</a> on python-dev, the outcome of which is that Paul Prescod posted a <a href="http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-announce-list/2002-February/001236.html">request for comments</a> to get input from the wider community. Several people chimed in with their opinions, and Guido told us to go off and figure out a solution, then report back to python-dev.</p>

<h3>Comparing some libraries</h3>

<p>I decided the only fair way to compare various libraries is to implement the same command-line interface with several of them. Here are <a href="compare">the results</a> of that experiment. </p>

<p>Optik, renamed to <a href="http://docs.python.org/library/optparse.html">optparse</a>, was added to Python 2.3's standard library. </p>