Using Multiple Identical Arguments with Argparse

Question

I am using the argparse library (https://docs.python.org/3/library/argparse.html) to parse arguments for a Python3 script. I would like to be able to specify a particular argument multiple times. For example:

$ myscript -i host1 -i host2

Using parser.add_argument('-i', nargs='*') allows multiple argument with -i. For example:

$ myscript -i host1 host2

However, I want multiple occurrences of -i. Is this possible? Right now a second use of the argument overwrites the first (in my initial example only 'host2' would be passed)

Just yesterday stackoverflow.com/questions/70165231/…

hpaulj
– hpaulj

2021-11-30 17:20:34 +00:00
Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 17:20 — hpaulj
– hpaulj, Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 17:20

rchome · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-30 17:08:13Z

1

From the documentation, if you use action="append", it seems to do what you want.

>>> parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
>>> parser.add_argument('--foo', action='append')
>>> parser.parse_args('--foo 1 --foo 2'.split())
Namespace(foo=['1', '2'])

answered Nov 30, 2021 at 17:08

rchome

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1 Comment

shepster Over a year ago

Yes! I overlooked the 'action' keyword argument. So the solution for me is parser.add_argument('-i', action='append'). Thank you!

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