Disable abbreviation in argparse

Question

argparse uses per default abbreviation in unambiguous cases.

I don\'t want abbreviation and I\'d like to disable it. But didn\'t find it in the documentation.

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Answer 1

No, apparently this is not possible. At least in Python 2.7.2.

First, I took a look into the documentation - to no avail.

Then I opened the Lib\argparse.py and looked through the source code. Omitting a lot of details, it seems that each argument is parsed by a regular expression like this (argparse:2152):

    # allow one or more arguments
    elif nargs == ONE_OR_MORE:
        nargs_pattern = '(-*A[A-]*)'

This regex will successfully parse both '-' and '--', so we have no control over the short and long arguments. Other regexes use the -* construct too, so it does not depend on the type of the parameter (no sub-arguments, 1 sub-argument etc).

Later in the code double dashes are converted to one dash (only for non-optional args), again, without any flags to control by user:

    # if this is an optional action, -- is not allowed
    if action.option_strings:
        nargs_pattern = nargs_pattern.replace('-*', '')
        nargs_pattern = nargs_pattern.replace('-', '')