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<H3><A NAME="SECTION0082132000000000000000"></A><A NAME="optparse-populating-parser"></A>
<BR>
6.21.3.2 Populating the parser
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<P>
There are several ways to populate the parser with options. The
preferred way is by using <code>OptionParser.add_option()</code>, as shown in
section <A href="optparse-tutorial.html#optparse-tutorial">6.21.2</A>, the tutorial. <tt class="method">add_option()</tt> can be called in one of two
ways:
<UL>
<LI>
pass it an Option instance (as returned by <tt class="function">make_option()</tt>)
<P>
</LI>
<LI>
pass it any combination of positional and keyword arguments that are
acceptable to <tt class="function">make_option()</tt> (i.e., to the Option constructor),
and it will create the Option instance for you
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The other alternative is to pass a list of pre-constructed Option
instances to the OptionParser constructor, as in:
<div class="verbatim"><pre>
option_list = [
make_option("-f", "--filename",
action="store", type="string", dest="filename"),
make_option("-q", "--quiet",
action="store_false", dest="verbose"),
]
parser = OptionParser(option_list=option_list)
</pre></div>
<P>
(<tt class="function">make_option()</tt> is a factory function for creating Option instances;
currently it is an alias for the Option constructor. A future version
of <tt class="module">optparse</tt> may split Option into several classes, and <tt class="function">make_option()</tt>
will pick the right class to instantiate. Do not instantiate Option
directly.)
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<span class="release-info">Release 2.4.3, documentation updated on 29 March 2006.</span>
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