argparse — adding a --version flag in the face of positional args

[Skip Montanaro]

I have a script to which I'd like to add a --version flag. It should print
the version number then exit, much in the same way --help prints the help
text then exits. I haven't been able to figure that out. I always get a
complaint about the required positional argument.

I think I could use something like nargs='*', but that would push off
detection of the presence of the positional arg to the application.
Shouldn't I be able to tell argparse I'm going to process --verbose, then
exit?

Thx,

Skip