Make use of argparse.REMAINDER

[pfuntner]

I have some tools such as sudo-ssh where an option might appear after the first positional parameter but I don't want the tool to interpret it as an option for it. For instance, without nargs=argparse.REMAINDER this command won't do what I want:

sudo-ssh foo find / -name bar

Instead, sudo-ssh complains about the -n option that it knows nothing about but the option isn't for sudo-ssh! It's for find when the tool runs the command on the remote foo machine!

WIthout nargs=argparse.REMAINDER, you need to do something like this instead to protect the faux-option:

sudo-ssh foo -- find / -name bar

But if nargs=argparse.REMAINDER is used, either use does what I want.

See:

• remainder script in Python/fun repo
• Stack overflow post Don't parse options after the last positional argument

[pfuntner]

While using this option could make -- unnecessary, it could also make the argparse help less accurate. Right now, I can rely on argparse automatically building the command string for online help.

It's not a major pain to use --. Sometimes I make use of it even when it's not necessary and that's not a bad practice.