gh-95836: Add custom type converter examples to argparse tutorial (GH-125376)

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Savannah Ostrowski 2024-10-17 04:41:22 -07:00 committed by GitHub
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@ -841,6 +841,53 @@ translated messages.
To translate your own strings in the :mod:`argparse` output, use :mod:`gettext`.
Custom type converters
======================
The :mod:`argparse` module allows you to specify custom type converters for
your command-line arguments. This allows you to modify user input before it's
stored in the :class:`argparse.Namespace`. This can be useful when you need to
pre-process the input before it is used in your program.
When using a custom type converter, you can use any callable that takes a
single string argument (the argument value) and returns the converted value.
However, if you need to handle more complex scenarios, you can use a custom
action class with the **action** parameter instead.
For example, let's say you want to handle arguments with different prefixes and
process them accordingly::
import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prefix_chars='-+')
parser.add_argument('-a', metavar='<value>', action='append',
type=lambda x: ('-', x))
parser.add_argument('+a', metavar='<value>', action='append',
type=lambda x: ('+', x))
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args)
Output:
.. code-block:: shell-session
$ python prog.py -a value1 +a value2
Namespace(a=[('-', 'value1'), ('+', 'value2')])
In this example, we:
* Created a parser with custom prefix characters using the ``prefix_chars``
parameter.
* Defined two arguments, ``-a`` and ``+a``, which used the ``type`` parameter to
create custom type converters to store the value in a tuple with the prefix.
Without the custom type converters, the arguments would have treated the ``-a``
and ``+a`` as the same argument, which would have been undesirable. By using custom
type converters, we were able to differentiate between the two arguments.
Conclusion
==========