[FIXED] Getting the remaining arguments in argparse

Issue

I created an argparse.ArgumentParser and added specific arguments like:

parser.add_argument('-i', action='store', dest='i', default='i.log')
parser.add_argument('-o', action='store', dest='o', default='o.log')

But I want to be able to accept any arguments, not just the ones for which I explicitly specified the semantics.

How can I make it so that any remaining command-line arguments are gathered together and I can access them after parsing?

Solution

Another option is to add a positional argument to your parser. Specify the option without leading dashes, and argparse will look for them when no other option is recognized. This has the added benefit of improving the help text for the command:

>>> parser.add_argument('otherthings', nargs='*')
>>> parser.parse_args(['foo', 'bar', 'baz'])
Namespace(i='i.log', o='o.log', otherthings=['foo', 'bar', 'baz'])

and

>>> print parser.format_help()
usage: ipython-script.py [-h] [-i I] [-o O] [otherthings [otherthings ...]]

positional arguments:
  otherthings

optional arguments:
  -h, --help   show this help message and exit
  -i I
  -o O

Answered By - SingleNegationElimination