python OptionParser.has_option error

Question

I have these below lines in my program

parser = OptionParser()

parser.add_option("-t","--TIMEOUT", dest="timeout", type="int",  help="timeout in seconds")

if parser.has_option("-t") and options.timeout<=0:
   print "Timeout if specified must be greater than zero"
   sys.exit(CLI_ERROR)

That print statement above is being printed because parser.has_option("-t") is evaluating to true even if no -t option is specified to this script. Am I missing something here. Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

You have to actually parse the options first. parser.has_option just checks to see if the parser understands the given option (which it does, since you used add_option to add it).

Thus, use

from optparse import OptionParser

parser = OptionParser()

parser.add_option("-t","--TIMEOUT", dest="timeout", type="int",  help="timeout in seconds")

options, args = parser.parse_args()
if options.timeout is not None and options.timeout <= 0:
    print "Timeout if specified must be greater than zero"
    sys.exit(CLI_ERROR)

Answer 2

(options, args) = parser.parse_args()
if options.timeout is not None and options.timeout <=0 :
.....

you should have a look at docopt https://github.com/docopt/docopt . great for command line interfaces