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

On 19 Oct 2004 at 22:35, Greg Ward wrote:

> On 20 October 2004, [email protected] said:
> > I don't understand the OP's problem or what the use case is.
> [...]
> > If you want to call your foofunc from within the interpreter, you
> > just type that in yourself, don't you? Why bother going through
> > optik?
> 
> I assume that his point was that for learning/experimenting/playing
> around, an interactive interpreter session is ideal.  I do that all
> the time when learning a new module.  I don't do that with Optik,
> since I know its capabilities and syntax pretty well.  ;-)  But I
> don't like this:
> 
>   $ python            # hmmm, this optik thing looks neat, let's
>   play... [...] >>> from optik import * >>> parser = OptionParser()
>   >>> parser.parse_args(["--help"]) usage:  [options]
> 
>   options:
>     -h, --help  show this help message and exit
>   $                    # aiee, dumped out of Python and back to the
>   shell!

IMHO, aiee nothing, it shows you *exactly* what happens. No drama. You can then 
reinvoke python and depending on what command-line history/editing tools you have, 
you can rapidly repeat previous commands.

What is the alternative -- trying to detect that you're in the interpreter, and displaying a 
message like "Had you run this in the manner for which the module is designed, it would 
have, as documented, dumped you back to the command prompt"????


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