Actions telloptparse what to do when it encounters an option on thecommand line. There is a fixed set of actions hard-coded intooptparse;adding new actions is an advanced topic covered in section 14.3.5, Extendingoptparse.Most actions telloptparse to store a value in some variable--forexample, take a string from the command line and store it in anattribute ofoptions.
If you don't specify an option action,optparse defaults tostore.