Choosing Option Names

You can choose pretty much any option name that is a legitimate Python keyword argument. The exceptions: Names that are already defined by methods of Options or OptionsChain. To wit: add, addflat, clear, copy, fromkeys, get, items, iteritems, iterkeys, itervalues, keys, magic, magical, new_child, parents, pop, popitem, push, read, set, setdefault, update, values, and write are off-limits.

If you try to define options with verboten names, a BadOptionName exception will be raised. This will save you grief down the road; getting back a wrong thing at runtime is vastly harder to debug than fielding an early exception.