[Python-Dev] Issue 15906; regression in argparse in Python 3.3, 3.2, and 2.7

[Barry Warsaw]

On Sep 11, 2012, at 01:17 PM, Terry Reedy wrote:

>This second example strikes me (naively, as English speaker but not argparse
>user) as 'wrong' in that 'default' is being misused to mean 'start value that
>is always used to generate the final value' [as in sum(iterable, start=0)],
>rather than 'final value that is only used if nothing else is given' (as in
>nearly all uses of 'default' in Python). Perhaps this is what you meant by
>"semantic ambiguity".

Well, in a sense yes, that is an ambiguity so I won't quibble about whether
it's the same one or not. :)

>As I see it, storing is done *with* a default or explicit value, appending is
>done *to* a start value *with* whatever. Perhaps reusing 'default' instead of
>using a new name such as 'start' was a bit too clever for our own good ;-).

I suspect that it's too late to change this, by say adding a 'start' parameter
or some such, at least until Python 3.4.

>> The fix for issue 12776 broke the last two lines of the second example,
>> because in the no-command-line-arguments-given case, arg.test is the
>> *string* "[]" and not the actual empty list object.
>
>This seems even more wrong (as in slightly crazy) as it switches the meaning
>of 'default' within one parser example rather than between parser examples.

And yet, that's how it works in 2.7, 3.2, and 3.3.1.

>> It seems to me that the semantics could reasonably be implied to mean that
>> the type converter should only be applied to the default value when
>> action='store', as is the default.  Then in the second example, because
>> action='append', the type conversion would not be applied (it makes no
>> sense to do so).
>
>I arrive at the same conclusion, I believe, by saying that for a given
>parser, the type converter should always or never be applied to 'default',
>which should mean converting or not when the parser is created. Append to
>'default as base or start' should mean not converting.

Does that mean that for fixing the regression, you favor applying the type
conversion only for action='store' or by only applying it when the default is
a string?

It seems better to only apply the type conversion for action='store' but more
backward compatible for the original behavior to only apply it when default is
a string.

Cheers,
-Barry