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changeset: 68977:423b50086b67 branch: 3.2 parent: 68975:4390d6939a56 user: Steven Bethard steven.bethard@gmail.com date: Sat Mar 26 19:50:06 2011 +0100 files: Doc/library/argparse.rst Misc/NEWS description: Issue #8982: Improve the documentation for the argparse Namespace object. diff -r 4390d6939a56 -r 423b50086b67 Doc/library/argparse.rst --- a/Doc/library/argparse.rst Sat Mar 26 19:29:44 2011 +0100 +++ b/Doc/library/argparse.rst Sat Mar 26 19:50:06 2011 +0100 @@ -1314,13 +1314,24 @@ Namespace(accumulate=, integers=[1, 2, 3, 4]) -Custom namespaces -^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ +The Namespace object +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + +By default, :meth:`parse_args` will return a new object of type :class:`Namespace` +where the necessary attributes have been set. This class is deliberately simple, +just an :class:`object` subclass with a readable string representation. If you +prefer to have dict-like view of the attributes, you can use the standard Python +idiom via :func:`vars`:: + + >>> parser = argparse.ArgumentParser() + >>> parser.add_argument('--foo') + >>> args = parser.parse_args(['--foo', 'BAR']) + >>> vars(args) + {'foo': 'BAR'} It may also be useful to have an :class:`ArgumentParser` assign attributes to an -already existing object, rather than the newly-created :class:`Namespace` object -that is normally used. This can be achieved by specifying the ``namespace=`` -keyword argument:: +already existing object, rather than a new :class:`Namespace` object. This can +be achieved by specifying the ``namespace=`` keyword argument:: >>> class C: ... pass diff -r 4390d6939a56 -r 423b50086b67 Misc/NEWS --- a/Misc/NEWS Sat Mar 26 19:29:44 2011 +0100 +++ b/Misc/NEWS Sat Mar 26 19:50:06 2011 +0100 @@ -157,6 +157,8 @@ - Issue #9348: Raise an early error if argparse nargs and metavar don't match. +- Issue #8982: Improve the documentation for the argparse Namespace object. + Build -----/steven.bethard@gmail.com