docopt turns command-line argument parsing on its head. Instead of parsing the arguments, you just write the usage string for your program, and docopt parses the usage string and uses it to extract the command line arguments.

"""
Usage:
    script_name.py [-a] [-b] <path>

Options:
    -a            Print all the things.
    -b            Get more bees into the path.
"""
from docopt import docopt

if __name__ == "__main__":
    args = docopt(__doc__)
    import pprint; pprint.pprint(args)

Sample runs:

$ python script_name.py
Usage:
    script_name.py [-a] [-b] <path>
$ python script_name.py something
{'-a': False,
 '-b': False,
 '<path>': 'something'}
$ python script_name.py something -a
{'-a': True,
 '-b': False,
 '<path>': 'something'}
$ python script_name.py -b something -a
{'-a': True,
 '-b': True,
 '<path>': 'something'}