python argparse two subparsers are basically same.. almost

Question

is it possible to extend subparsers new names without implementing all of their parameters twice? I have a program, let's call it pgmm which has a sub function create . This create function needs a config file somewhere. To prevent looking for this, create can have the option --noconfig .

What I want now is to have some 'pseudo sub parser' maybe like init , which is basically the same as create --noconfig

I hope that there is a way without implementing the same twice..

is it?

Answer 1

I don't know of a way of adding this logic to argparse per se, but you don't have to do that to get the behavior you want. You can create a subparser for create and add init as an alias for that command so that either command name can be used. Then, when you consume the arguments after calling parse_args , check which subcommand was executed, and if it was init , then force the noconfig flag to True :

sub_parsers = parser.add_subparsers(dest="action")

...

sub = sub_parsers.add_parser('create', aliases=['init'])
sub.add_argument('--noconfig', action='store_true')

....

args = parser.parse_args(args)
if args.action == 'init':
    args.noconfig = True