[mey]

    import argparse
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument('-v','--version',action='version', version='demo',help='Print version information')
    parser.add_argument('-d','--debug', help='Enable Debug Mode')
    parser.add_argument('a','arg', help="Argument Documentation")
    args = parser.parse_args()

Personally I feel like this is more readable code, gets me better validation, and help docs for "free". That's the attraction.

[gitgud]

Elegant, but then it's no longer a basic shell-script as it requires python installed.

If you can live with additional dependencies, then I like the node [1] commander package, which is very readable and nice to work with in my opinion.

        #!/usr/bin/env node
        const { program } = require('commander');

        program
          .command('clone <source> [destination]')
          .description('clone a repository')
          .action((source, destination) => {
            console.log('clone command called');
          });

It also automatically generates the --help output for ./script -h

[1] https://github.com/tj/commander.js/