`required` for flag arguments about argparse.jl

[carlobaldassi]

Could you explain the rationale for this? I explicitly left out that python feature since the idea of a "required option" seems an oxymoron to me: why not using positional arguments for that?

In the same vein, Python documentation expressly states:

Required options are generally considered bad form because users expect options to be optional, and thus they should be avoided when possible.

In the particular example of input files and output files, those are indeed typically passed as positional arguments, in all applications that I know of.

[trevor]

Hi Carlo, thanks for the follow-up.

In some commercial bioinformatics applications (such as those wrapped by Galaxy http://galaxyproject.org/ ) there can be several arguments required, and these are all provided via flag arguments instead of positional arguments.

In my particular case I'm porting an application to Julia and need to maintain the same command-line interface.

[carlobaldassi]

Ok, I'll see if I manage to implement this in a reasonable time frame.