On Wed, Oct 9, 2019 at 11:01 PM Ryan Gonzalez <rymg19@gmail.com> wrote:

I believe you want Python 3.7's parse_intermixed_args: https://docs.python.org/3/library/argparse.html#argparse.ArgumentParser.pars...

A quick test seems to work:

import argparse

p = argparse.ArgumentParser() p.add_argument('files', nargs='*') p.add_argument('-f', '--force', action='store_true')

print(p.parse_intermixed_args())

$ python3 rm.py x -f y Namespace(files=['x', 'y'], force=True) $

This is EXACTLY what I've been looking for. Looks like it was added in 2017 and release in 3.7. The box I use where I investigated this has 3.6 on it. Sigh, well at least I know it was a good idea! Thanks so much!

On Wed, Oct 9, 2019, 9:50 PM brent bejot <brent.bejot@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello all,

Aspiring contributor here. I am not at all certain that this is the right place to discuss this. Do refer me to a better location if I'm out of place.

I would like to add a simple feature to the argparse library. I frequently find myself writing small utilities, stylistically similar to unix's "rm" whose main parameter(s) get bundled into a list and it doesn't matter if flags are sprinkled throughout.

e.g. "rm foo.txt -f bar.txt" removes both foo.txt and bar.txt forcefully.

Doing this in argparse currently is cumbersome at best (though I would be happy to be proved wrong on that), so I rarely implement it as a feature.

Of note, calling parser.add_argument with nargs="..." or nargs="A..." or nargs="*" gets close, but will not allow you to intermix other flags between your list.

I have a working modification of argparse.py that I could commit, but I know there's several steps between here and there - I just don't know what those steps are.

Any direction would be very much appreciated.

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On Oct 9, 2019, at 20:56, Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:

What you may want to consider is backporting the exact argparse.py from Python 3.7. It's a fairly straight-forward module and will probably work fine on 3.6. That way, once you upgrade to 3.7, it'll keep working the exact same way.

The argparse module on PyPI (which works on 2.3+/3.1+) says it “tries to stay compatible with the module in the standard library, but also supports older Python versions.” So it may already include this feature. And if not, it may be worth submitting a patch to update it to the 3.7 version. That may be trivial, or it may require some complicated rewriting to work with 2.x (in which case it might even be worth creating a separate backport module that requires, say, 3.4+ but is easier to keep in sync with new features).