Be careful when you switch from optparse.OptionParser to argparse.ArgumentParser as they use different defaults for action="store_true" and action="store_false": The former initializes the value to None while the later one to the inverse of the desired action, that is to False if action="store_true" is used and vis-versa.

Even more alternatives for parsing command line arguments:

• getopt
• click
• docopt

PS: Our former college “Janek” would call argparse an “atrocity” anyway and you should stay with optparse.