Andy Kannberg wrote: > I tried with the example Peter gave me, and it works. But only when the > options are boolean. At least, that is my conclusion with experimenting. > I'll elaborate: > > The code to create 'mutually exclusive options': > > option_names = [ "l", "o" , "s" ] > toggled_options = [name for name in option_names if getattr(opts, name)] > if len(toggled_options) > 1: > s = repr(toggled_options).strip("[]") > parser.error("options %s are mutually exclusive" % s)
This doesn't actually create mutually exclusive options, it just checks if there are conflicting options after they are parsed, and exists with an error message when conflicts are found. > The options: > > parser = optparse.OptionParser() > parser.add_option('-l', help='Show optionset list', dest='l', > action='store_true' ) > parser.add_option('-o', help='Show content of optionset ', dest='o', > action='store') > parser.add_option('-s', help='Set optionset for a host', dest='s', > action='store' , nargs=2) > > The first option, -l, doesn't require an argument > The second option, -o, does require one argument. > The third option, -s does require 2 arguments. > > I need to add 4 more options, which all need one or more arguments. > > Now, when I run the program with the options defined as above, everything > works, except, the 'mutually exclusive' part. Because only the -l option > is set to 'true' when selected. When I modify the options to this: > > parser = optparse.OptionParser() > parser.add_option('-l', help='Show optionset list', dest='l', > action='store_true' ) > parser.add_option('-o', help='Show content of optionset ', dest='o', > action='store_true') > parser.add_option('-s', help='Set optionset for a host', dest='s', > action='store_true' , nargs=2) > > I get this error: > > # ./listopt3.py -o -l > Traceback (most recent call last): > File "./listopt3.py", line 8, in <module> > parser.add_option('-s', help='Set optionset for a host', dest='s', > action='store_true' , nargs=2) > File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/optparse.py", line 1012, in add_option > option = self.option_class(*args, **kwargs) > File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/optparse.py", line 577, in __init__ > checker(self) > File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/optparse.py", line 706, in _check_nargs > self) > optparse.OptionError: option -s: 'nargs' must not be supplied for action > 'store_true' > > So, apparanly, using boolean AND arguments isn't allowed. > I'm still learning Python, so if someone can point me in the right > direction would be great! You don't need the action="store_true" for every option, only for those that act as a flag, i. e. are present or not, but don't carry a value. Here is a working example: $ cat optparse_mutually_exclusive.py import optparse parser = optparse.OptionParser() parser.add_option("-l", "--list-optionsets", help="Show optionset list", action="store_true") parser.add_option("-o", "--show-options", help="Show content of optionset") parser.add_option("-s", "--set-options", help="Set optionset for a host", nargs=2) options, args = parser.parse_args() option_names = ["list_optionsets", "show_options", "set_options"] toggled_options = [name for name in option_names if getattr(options, name)] if len(toggled_options) > 1: s = repr(toggled_options).strip("[]") parser.error("options %s are mutually exclusive" % s) print options Let's run it a few times: $ python2.6 optparse_mutually_exclusive.py -h Usage: optparse_mutually_exclusive.py [options] Options: -h, --help show this help message and exit -l, --list-optionsets Show optionset list -o SHOW_OPTIONS, --show-options=SHOW_OPTIONS Show content of optionset -s SET_OPTIONS, --set-options=SET_OPTIONS Set optionset for a host $ python2.6 optparse_mutually_exclusive.py --list-optionsets {'list_optionsets': True, 'show_options': None, 'set_options': None} $ python2.6 optparse_mutually_exclusive.py --list-optionsets --show-options Usage: optparse_mutually_exclusive.py [options] optparse_mutually_exclusive.py: error: --show-options option requires an argument $ python2.6 optparse_mutually_exclusive.py --show-options foo {'list_optionsets': None, 'show_options': 'foo', 'set_options': None} $ python2.6 optparse_mutually_exclusive.py --show-options foo -s bar baz Usage: optparse_mutually_exclusive.py [options] optparse_mutually_exclusive.py: error: options 'show_options', 'set_options' are mutually exclusive $ python2.6 optparse_mutually_exclusive.py foo -s bar baz {'list_optionsets': None, 'show_options': None, 'set_options': ('bar', 'baz')} I should mention one important restriction with this approach: the default value must be "falsy" like None, [], "", 0, and the value provided by the user must be "truish" like -1, 42.0, "foo", ["a", "b"]. Also, ceterum censeo ;) -- there is a version of argparse available for download on https://pypi.python.org/pypi/argparse that should work with Python 2.6 and offers a better approach, see http://docs.python.org/2/library/argparse.html#sub-commands for the documentation. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list