OptionParser python module - multiple entries of same variable?

Question

I'm writing a little python script to get stats from several servers or a single server, and I'm using OptionParser to parse the command line input.

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys
from optparse import OptionParser
...
parser.add_option("-s", "--server", dest="server", metavar="SERVER", type="string", 
                  help="server(s) to gather stats [default: localhost]")
...

my GOAL is to be able to do something like

#test.py -s server1 -s server2

and it would append both of those values within the options.server object in some way so that I could iterate through them, whether they have 1 value or 10.

Any thoughts / help is appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

You could try to check out argparse. It provides "nargs" parameter meaning you would be able to do something along

#test.py -s server1 server2

I know that's not exactly what requested but it might be a decent compromise without too much hassle. :)

Answer 2

Could be easier to accept a comma-separated list of servers:

# test.py -s server1,server2

and split the value within your script.

Answer 3

import optparse

parser = optparse.OptionParser()
parser.add_option('-t', '--test', action='append')

options, args = parser.parse_args()
for i, opt in enumerate(options.test):
    print 'option %s: %s' % (i, opt)