Argument/option parameters with hyphens are interpreted as new options

[ereyes01]

What I'm ultimately trying to do in my particular case is write a process runner using click. Ideally, I'd like to take the trailing end of argv as a list of strings. I'm trying to accomplish this via an argument with nargs=-1. Below is a very simple dumbed-down version that demonstrates my issue:

import click

@click.command()
@click.argument("arg", nargs=-1)
def tasqr_cli(arg):
    click.echo(arg)

This code behaves as follows:

$ python run.py the quick brown fox
('the', 'quick', 'brown', 'fox')

$ python run.py ls -altr
Usage: run.py [OPTIONS] [ARG]...

Error: no such option: -a

Setting the type of "arg" to str didn't make a difference.

You can generalize this test to demonstrate that any argument that starts with a hyphen gives a similar error (i.e. it is interpreted as a missing option), no matter what nargs is set to. So I guess I have a practical question, and a more philosophical design question:

• Am I using the right approach to accomplish my particular goal of capturing an arbitrary trailing argv of strings?
• Shouldn't nargs of an option/argument win out over the processing of a new option? Suppose you have something with nargs == 2, if one of those 2 spots were to be a new option, you would have an insufficient number of parameters to the option/argument, right?

I am using Click 3.3 installed via pip/Pypi.

thanks, Eddy

[ereyes01]

I did find this documentation on the subject, which suggests I need to precede the arbitrary arg list with a --. This is unfortunate for my needs...

Also, that snippet of documentation doesn't quite answer my philosophical question above, though it hints at what the response might be :-)

[ereyes01]

I think it's clear that this is a design choice in Click, and that it follows the POSIX convention. To do what I want, I must add the -- like this:

python run.py -- ls -altr

FWIW, this is exactly what the POSIX standard specifies for command-line utilities (scroll down and see Section 12.2 Guideline 10).

So the behavior is documented both in Click and in POSIX. I ain't gonna win this argument :)