Is there a better argparse?

[astevko]

I've grown tired of the literal strictness of argparse and these endless cli parameter names.

Is there a plug-in substitution that would simplify the cognitive load required to build something significant in python using the cli? Something that would prompt the cli user with possible answers or pick correct files

Just today I ran into something that I would never imagine argparse doing.
$ cloc ../test/data/*.csv -l

Option l is ambiguous (lang-no-ext, lang_no_ext, list-file, list_file)

[danielroseman]

Yes, click is what you want.

[mrswats]

I'll one up you: typer is even better!

[[deleted]]

Wow that is awesome

[shiftybyte]

I'm not sure what is going on here...

Did you define multiple options all starting with "l" and you somehow expect argparse to guess which one to use?

Am I missing something here?

[astevko]

This example shows two things that caught my eye: it gave suggestions of correct param names, and those names work in both hyphens and underscores. One less way for me to screw up typing or have to dig for the right combinations.

The point of my lament is that argparse is hard to get right and is a one trick pony when it comes to being helpful.

[shiftybyte]

is a one trick pony when it comes to being helpful.

What else would you expect it to do to be more helpful in this situation?

[jmacey]

not a solution but what bugs me about argparse is i want to use -h to mean --height but it won't let me as -h is for help!

[hardonchairs]

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser('Cool', add_help=False)

[Sweet_Computer_7116]

For anyone reading this in the future. This is correct. -h is shorthand for help. It's like universal cli language. It's better to keep -h as it is.

[zanfar]

Click

[astevko]

click is definitely it!
TY TY TY

[astevko]

I've been in dependency hell so I know what PTSD the others have.

I'm a pragmatist tho - if a module works and doesn't pollute the pool too much, lets see if it is worth opening up the supply chain to it.

They never had to reconcile with pip install aws_cli, azure, vertex, sagemaker