On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Ian Kelly <ian.g.ke...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 1:05 AM, ru...@yahoo.com <ru...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> I have optparse code that parses a command line containing >> intermixed positional and optional arguments, where the optional >> arguments set the context for the following positional arguments. >> For example, >> >> myprogram.py arg1 -c33 arg2 arg3 -c44 arg4 >> >> 'arg1' is processed in a default context, 'args2' and 'arg3' in >> context '33', and 'arg4' in context '44'. >> >> I am trying to do the same using argparse but it appears to be >> not doable in a documented way. >> >> Here is the working optparse code (which took 30 minutes to write >> using just the optparse docs): >> >> import optparse >> def append_with_pos (option, opt_str, value, parser): >> if getattr (parser.values, option.dest, None) is None: >> setattr (parser.values, option.dest, []) >> getattr (parser.values, option.dest).append ((value, len >> (parser.largs))) >> def opt_parse(): >> p = optparse.OptionParser() >> p.add_option ("-c", type=int, >> action='callback', callback=append_with_pos) >> opts, args = p.parse_args() >> return args, opts >> if __name__ == '__main__': >> args, opts = opt_parse() >> print args, opts >> >> Output from the command line above: >> ['arg1', 'arg2', 'arg3', 'arg4'] {'c': [(33, 1), (44, 3)]} >> The -c values are stored as (value, arglist_position) tuples. >> >> Here is an attempt to convert to argparse using the guidelines >> in the argparse docs: >> >> import argparse >> class AppendWithPos (argparse.Action): >> def __call__ (self, parser, namespace, values, >> option_string=None): >> if getattr (namespace, self.dest, None) is None: >> setattr (namespace, self.dest, []) >> getattr (namespace, self.dest).extend ((values, len >> (parser.largs))) >> def arg_parse(): >> p = argparse.ArgumentParser (description='description') >> p.add_argument ('src', nargs='*') >> p.add_argument ('-c', type=int, action=AppendWithPos) >> opts = p.parse_args() >> return opts >> if __name__ == '__main__': >> opts = arg_parse() >> print opts >> >> This fails with, >> AttributeError: 'ArgumentParser' object has no attribute 'largs' >> and of course, the argparse.parser is not documented beyond how >> to instantiate it. Even were that not a problem, argparse complains >> about "unrecognised arguments" for any positional arguments that >> occur after an optional one. I've been farting with this code for >> a day now. >> >> Any suggestions on how I can convince argparse to do what optparse >> does easily will be very welcome. (I tried parse_known_args() but >> that breaks help and requires me to detect truly unknown arguments.) >> >> (Python 2.7.1 if it matters and apologies if Google mangles >> the formatting of this post.) > > You have the namespace object in your custom action. Instead of > "len(parser.largs)", couldn't you just do "len(namespace.src)"?
Sorry, I missed the second part of that. You seem to be right, as far as I can tell from tinkering with it, all the positional arguments have to be in a single group. If you have some positional arguments followed by an option followed by more positional arguments, and any of the arguments have a loose nargs quantifier ('?' or '*' or '+'), then you get an error. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list