what is the right way to treat Python argparse.Namespace() as a dictionary?

Question

If I want to use the results of argparse.ArgumentParser(), which is a Namespace object, with a method that expects a dictionary or mapping-like obj

Answer 1

Straight from the horse's mouth:

If you prefer to have dict-like view of the attributes, you can use the standard Python idiom, vars():

>>> parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
>>> parser.add_argument('--foo')
>>> args = parser.parse_args(['--foo', 'BAR'])
>>> vars(args)
{'foo': 'BAR'}

— The Python Standard Library, 16.4.4.6. The Namespace object