Enchancement suggestion for argparse: intuit type from default

[MRAB]

On 15/03/2012 00:52, Roy Smith wrote:
> In article<4f612a9d$0$12033$742ec2ed at news.sonic.net>,
>   John Nagle<nagle at animats.com>  wrote:
>
>>  On 3/13/2012 2:08 PM, Roy Smith wrote:
>>  >  Using argparse, if I write:
>>  >
>>  >       parser.add_argument('--foo', default=100)
>>  >
>>  >  it seems like it should be able to intuit that the type of foo should
>>  >  be int (i.e. type(default)) without my having to write:
>>  >
>>  >       parser.add_argument('--foo', type=int, default=100)
>>  >
>>  >  Does this seem like a reasonable enhancement to argparse?
>>
>>      default=None
>>
>>  presents some problems.
>
> I'll admit I hadn't considered that, but I don't see it as a major
> problem.  The type intuition could be designed to only work for types
> other than NoneType.

True, you could consider that a special case.

If you really do want NoneType, or if the type doesn't otherwise match
the default (or there's no default), then you can still be explicit.