Creating hidden arguments with Python argparse

Question

Is it possible to add an Argument to an python argparse.ArgumentParser without it showing up in the usage or help (script.py --help)?

Asked By: Peter Smit

||

Source

Answer 1

Yes, you can set the help option to add_argument to argparse.SUPPRESS. Here’s an example from the argparse documentation:

>>> parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='frobble')
>>> parser.add_argument('--foo', help=argparse.SUPPRESS)
>>> parser.print_help()
usage: frobble [-h]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

Answered By: srgerg

Answer 2

I do it by adding an option to enable the hidden ones, and grab that by looking at sysv.args.

If you do this, you have to include the special arg you pick out of sys.argv directly in the parse list if you Assume the option is -s to enable hidden options.

parser.add_argument('-a', '-axis',
                    dest="axis", action="store_true", default=False,
                    help="Rotate the earth")
if "-s" in sys.argv or "-secret" in sys.argv:
    parser.add_argument('-s', '-secret',
                        dest="secret", action="store_true", default=False,
                        help="Enable secret options")
    parser.add_argument('-d', '-drill',
                        dest="drill", action="store_true", default=False,
                        help="drill baby, drill")

Answered By: rob boudrie

Creating hidden arguments with Python argparse

Question:

Answers: