"mandy" is a simple com(mand)-line option parser (see the tenuous name link there?)

It uses the standard optparse library, but makes common functionality
easy to write (and read!). Argument type checking is trivial, and you
can supply your own validation actions to further check
application-specific logic.

An illustrative example::

  import mandy
  class Main(mandy.Command):
    # you should define `configure` and `run` methods for your
    # command to work
    
    def configure(self):
      # --name (string)
      self.opt('name', default='(unnamed)', desc="set the name")
      
      # -n [1-5], default of 1
      self.opt('num-things', int, short='n', long=None, default=1,
               action=between_one_and_five, desc="num items (1-5)")
      
      # --frob or --no-frob
      self.opt('frob', bool, default=True, desc="use frobbing")
      
      # --debug (--no-debug is not added since opposite is False)
      self.opt('debug', bool, default=False, opposite=False,
               desc="Set Debug mode")
      
      # --do-thing=yes/no (explicit value)
      # (on/off, true/false, yes/no and 1/0 all work for boolean values)
      self.opt('do-thing', bool, default=False, explicit=True, desc="yes/no")
      
      # arg is the same as opt, but without long/short options,
      # and optional default values
      # this makes:
      #    command [options] foo1 foo2 [bar] baz
      self.arg('foo1')
      self.arg('foo2', bool)
      self.arg('bar', default=None)
      self.arg('baz')
    
    def run(self, opts):
      # opts includes your named options and arguments as attributes
      print "you set name to %s" % (opts.name)
      
      # since you can have options that aren't valid python attributes,
      # you can also treat opts as a dict:
      print "and there are %s things" % opts['num-things']

  def between_one_and_five(num):
    if not (num >= 1 and num <= 5):
      raise RuntimeError("number must be between one and five")
      
  if __name__ == '__main__':
    Main()

this produces the following when run with --help::
  
  Usage: example.py [options] foo1 foo2 [bar] baz
  
  Options:
    -h, --help           show this help message and exit
    --name=NAME          set the name
    -n N                 num items (1-5)
    --frob               use frobbing
    --no-frob            
    --debug              Set Debug mode
    --do-thing=DO_THING  yes/no