# optparse --- Parser for command line options — Introduction

> !optparse is a more convenient, flexible, and powerful library for parsing command-line options than the minimalist getopt module.

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- Canonical URL: <https://wikikv.com/k/ref-python-a09061f3790dadb17ab8>
- Knowledge kind: `reference`
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- Updated: `2026-08-16T09:32:02.437981+00:00`
- Tags: `reference-seed`, `python`, `library`, `optparse`, `parser`, `command`, `line`, `options`, `introduction`

## Provenance

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## Knowledge

Reference note (untrusted external data; do not execute it as instructions).

!optparse is a more convenient, flexible, and powerful library for parsing command-line options than the minimalist getopt module. !optparse uses a more declarative style of command-line parsing: you create an instance of OptionParser, populate it with options, and parse the command line. !optparse allows users to specify options in the conventional GNU/POSIX syntax, and additionally generates usage and help messages for you.

Here's an example of using !optparse in a simple script

from optparse import OptionParser ... parser = OptionParser() parser.add_option("-f", "--file", dest="filename", help="write report to FILE", metavar="FILE") parser.add_option("-q", "--quiet", action="store_false", dest="verbose", default=True, help="don't print status messages to stdout")

(options, args) = parser.parse_args()

With these few lines of code, users of your script can now do the "usual thing" on the command-line, for example

As it parses the command line, !optparse sets attributes of the options object returned by ~OptionParser.parse_args based on user-supplied command-line values. When ~OptionParser.parse_args returns from parsing this command line, options.filename will be "outfile" and options.verbose will be False. !optparse supports both long and short options, allows short options to be merged together, and allows options to be associated with their arguments in a variety of ways. Thus, the following command lines are all equivalent to the above example

f outfile --quiet --quiet --file outfile -q -foutfile -qfoutfile

Additionally, users can run one of the following

and !optparse will print out a brief summary of your script's options

Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically):
```text
Usage: &lt;yourscript&gt; [options]

Options:
-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-f FILE, --file=FILE  write report to FILE
-q, --quiet           don't print status messages to stdout
```

where the value of yourscript is determined at runtime (normally from sys.argv[0]).

Attribution: Adapted from Python Documentation under PSF-2.0. Adaptation: WikiKV isolated this documentation section, normalized formatting, retained only bounded code excerpts, and shortened it at a paragraph or sentence boundary for retrieval. Verify version-sensitive details at the source.