Usage of optparse

Sample code for optparse [sample_code.py]

from optparse import OptionParser

def main():
  usage = "usage: %prog [options] something"
  parser = OptionParser(usage)

  parser.add_option("-f", "--file",
                    default=None, dest="filename",
                    help="read data from FILENAME")

  parser.add_option("-v", "--verbose",
                    default=True, action="store_true", dest="verbose",
                    help="verbose output")

  (options, args) = parser.parse_args()

  if len(args) != 1:
      parser.error("incorrect number of arguments")

  if options.verbose:
      print "reading %s..." % options.filename

  print options.verbose
  print options.filename

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

Testing above sample code

# python sample_code.py something
reading None...
True
None