mandy a terse command-line options parser "mandy" is a simple com(mand)-line option parser (see the tenuous name link there?) It uses the standard optparse library, but makes common functionality easy to write (and read!). Argument type checking is trivial, and you can supply your own validation actions to further check application-specific logic. An illustrative example:: import mandy class Main(mandy.Command): # you should define `configure` and `run` methods for your # command to work def configure(self): # --name (string) self.opt('name', default='(unnamed)', desc="set the name") # -n [1-5], default of 1 self.opt('num-things', int, short='n', long=None, default=1, action=between_one_and_five, desc="num items (1-5)") # --frob or --no-frob self.opt('frob', bool, default=True, desc="use frobbing") # --debug (--no-debug is not added since opposite is False) self.opt('debug', bool, default=False, opposite=False, desc="Set Debug mode") # --do-thing=yes/no (explicit value) # (on/off, true/false, yes/no and 1/0 all work for boolean values) self.opt('do-thing', bool, default=False, explicit=True, desc="yes/no") # arg is the same as opt, but without long/short options, # and optional default values # this makes: # command [options] foo1 foo2 [bar] baz self.arg('foo1') self.arg('foo2', bool) self.arg('bar', default=None) self.arg('baz') def run(self, opts): # opts includes your named options and arguments as attributes print "you set name to %s" % (opts.name) # since you can have options that aren't valid python attributes, # you can also treat opts as a dict: print "and there are %s things" % opts['num-things'] def between_one_and_five(num): if not (num >= 1 and num <= 5): raise RuntimeError("number must be between one and five") if __name__ == '__main__': Main() this produces the following when run with --help:: Usage: example.py [options] foo1 foo2 [bar] baz Options: -h, --help show this help message and exit --name=NAME set the name -n N num items (1-5) --frob use frobbing --no-frob --debug Set Debug mode --do-thing=DO_THING yes/no Tim Cuthbertson ae45809508d99929996df59a05a57b0180cffd4b 0.1.2