Re: argsparse: allowing --version without mandatory options

On 2025-10-31 at 09:09:08 +0000,
Anders Munch <[email protected]> wrote:

> From: [email protected] <[email protected]>:
> > Don't take this the wrong way, but what, exactly, is a mandatory option?
> 
> It's a named argument.

Okay.

> Positional arguments intermixed with options can get confusing. When you see 
>      aprogram.py --a --b c --d --e
> is 'c' the value for --b, or is it a positional argument? Hard to tell.
> Using options syntax for everything makes it clearer, because everything has a name:
>      aprogram.py --a --b --c c --d --e

Is 'c' the value for --c, or is it a positional argument?  Hard to tell.

Perhaps it would be easier to tell with non-degenerate names.

Perhaps not.

Or maybe if I understood all the use cases for aprogram.py.  But if I
truly understood the all use cases, and the use case I was using in
particular, then I would understand the options and arguments, named,
unnamed, optional, or mandatory.

APIs are easy to create, and hard to get right.