Numeric command-line options vs. negative-number arguments

[Ben Finney]

Steven Bethard <steven.bethard at gmail.com> writes:

> Did you try it and find it didn't work as you expected?

No, I was commenting on the behaviour you described (hence why I said
"That would be irritating").

> Argparse knows what your option flags look like, so if you specify
> one, it knows it's an option.  Argparse will only interpret it as a
> negative number if you specify a negative number that doesn't match
> a known option.

That's also irritating, and violates the expected behaviour. It leads
to *some* undefined options being flagged as errors, and others
interpreted as arguments. The user shouldn't need to know the complete
set of options to know which leading-hyphen arguments will be treated
as options and which ones won't.

The correct behaviour would be to *always* interpret an argument that
has a leading hyphen as an option (unless it follows an explicit '--'
option), and complain if the option is unknown.

-- 
 \     "When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. |
  `\    Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole |
_o__)                one and asked Him to forgive me."  -- Emo Philips |
Ben Finney