[Python-Dev] argparse ambiguity handling (original) (raw)

Neal Becker ndbecker2 at gmail.com
Tue Apr 20 21:27:53 CEST 2010

Steven Bethard wrote:

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Neal Becker <ndbecker2 at gmail.com> wrote:

I've noticed argparse ambiguity handling has changed a bit over last few revisions.

I have cases where 1 valid input is a prefix of another: e.g.: '--string' '--string2' With the most recent 1.1, the behavior is: --string=hello is accepted, while: --strin=hello is marked as ambiguous. I'm OK with this, but just want to know if there is agreement that this is the behavior we want. I don't have a strong feeling about this. What was the behavior before? Steve

At least 1 earlier version said that even exact match was ambiguous.

I have a preference to allow at least exact matches to succeed even in the case of ambiguity - mainly because I accidentally created this already once, and I feel it's better to at least work somewhat. Not sure if there is any more elegant solution. OTOH, I feel this is somewhat inelegant, as it appears to treat exact match as a special case.

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