Re: --help option: sys.exit or return?

On 19 October 2004, Miguel A Figueroa-Villanneva said:
> Both methods provide a way to get around this, although not optimal as you
> mention. I was looking at the 'getargs' package for reference (I'll stick
> with Optik though) and noticed that they implement an exception system;
> where they propagate exceptions: HelpQuery, VersionQuery, UsageError,
> KeyError, and ValueError. This of course, means that it is up to the user
> to catch these exceptions to exit from the system.
> 
> I'm thinking this is a nice solution, although I can think of reasons why
> not to go that direction as well. For example, the user has to write more
> code and always implement these exceptions...
> 
> Are there any more fundamental reasons why this approach wouldn't be a
> good one to follow?

For me, 100% of scripts that use Optik are of the "parse command-line
args and exit on error or help/version query".  I don't want to write
duplicate logic in every single one of those scripts to handle the "exit
on error or help/version query" bit -- that would get tiresome very
quickly.  So I have Optik do it for me.

I suspect that at least 90% of scripts in the wild that use Optik are of
the same pattern.  Optik 1.5 has a minor refactoring where I pulled out
an exit() method that should address the small minority of cases where
exiting immediately is not the right thing to do.  Case closed, as far
as I am concerned.

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward <[email protected]>                         http://www.gerg.ca/
MTV -- get off the air!
    -- Dead Kennedys


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