argparse - disable same argument occurrences

Question

I\'m trying to disable same argument occurences within one command line, using argparse

./python3 --argument1=something --argument2 --argument1=something_els         


        

Answer 1

I don't think there is a native way to do it using argparse, but fortunately, argparse offers methods to report custom errors. The most elegant way is probably to define a custom action that checks for duplicates (and exits if there are).

class UniqueStore(argparse.Action):
    def __call__(self, parser, namespace, values, option_string):
        if getattr(namespace, self.dest, self.default) is not self.default:
            parser.error(option_string + " appears several times.")
        setattr(namespace, self.dest, values)

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('-f', '--foo', action=UniqueStore)

args = parser.parse_args()

(Read the docs about cutom actions)

Another way is to use the append action and count the len of the list.

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('-f', '--foo', action='append')
args = parser.parse_args()

if len(args.foo) > 1:
    parser.error("--foo appears several times.")