<p>What's the <strong>easiest</strong>, <strong>tersest</strong>, and most <strong>flexible</strong> method or library for parsing Python command line arguments?</p>

Use
```
optparse
```
which comes with the standard library. For example:
```
```
#!/usr/bin/env python
import optparse

def main():
  p = optparse.OptionParser()
  p.add_option('--person', '-p', default="world")
  options, arguments = p.parse_args()
  print 'Hello %s' % options.person

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()
```
```
Source:
Using Python to create UNIX command line tools
However as of Python 2.7 optparse is deprecated, see:
Why use argparse rather than optparse?