AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'ArgumentParser'

[bsduni]

BPO	20840
Nosy	@ezio-melotti, @merwok, @bitdancer

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2014-05-09.12:51:21.650>
created_at = <Date 2014-03-03.09:05:48.361>
labels = ['extension-modules', 'type-bug']
title = "AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'ArgumentParser'"
updated_at = <Date 2020-07-18.19:22:58.012>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/bsduni'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2020-07-18.19:22:58.012>
actor = 'David Friedman'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2014-05-09.12:51:21.650>
closer = 'ezio.melotti'
components = ['Extension Modules']
creation = <Date 2014-03-03.09:05:48.361>
creator = 'bsduni'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 20840
keywords = []
message_count = 6.0
messages = ['212620', '212622', '212686', '212688', '218162', '373913']
nosy_count = 6.0
nosy_names = ['ezio.melotti', 'eric.araujo', 'Arfrever', 'r.david.murray', 'bsduni', 'David Friedman']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'works for me'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue20840'
versions = ['Python 2.7']

[bsduni]

Hi!

I have installed Python 2.7.6 fully (all the modules selected). I attempted run some Python codes that were developed by a past staff, and am stuck with an issue with argparse.

For ease of explanation I am using the example given in this website at http://docs.python.org/2/howto/argparse.html.

When I create a simple program prog.py with codes below:

import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.parse_args()

and execute with $ python prog.py, the following is the error message I receive:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "prog.py", line 2, in <module>
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'ArgumentParser'

I also tried to add argparse additionally using pip install and the problem remains the same.

Would be grateful if someone could help to overcome this AttributeError.

[Arfrever]

I guess that there is argparse module in current directory, which overrides argparse module from standard library.
Use e.g. print(argparse) or print(argparse.__file__) to find it.
A correct location would be something like /usr/lib64/python2.7/argparse.pyc.

[bsduni]

Unfortunately it is not that case, ie, no argparse in my current working directory /home/bsduni/pytests/ (on a FreeBSD 9.2 system).

The following are the locations I can find argparse in my system:

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/argparse.py
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/argparse.pyo
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/argparse.pyc

/usr/ports/lang/python27/work/Python-2.7.6/Doc/howto/argparse.rst
/usr/ports/lang/python27/work/Python-2.7.6/Doc/library/argparse.rst
/usr/ports/lang/python27/work/Python-2.7.6/Lib/argparse.py

/usr/ports/lang/python27/work/stage/usr/local/lib/python2.7/argparse.py
/usr/ports/lang/python27/work/stage/usr/local/lib/python2.7/argparse.pyc
/usr/ports/lang/python27/work/stage/usr/local/lib/python2.7/argparse.pyo

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/external/argparse

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse.py
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse.pyc
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse-1.1-py2.7.egg-info
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse_actions
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse_actions-0.4.4-py2.7.egg-info
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse_config
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse_config-0.5.1-py2.7.egg-info
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse.extra-0.0.2-py2.7.egg-info
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/argparse.extra-0.0.2-py2.7-nspkg.pth

The the files in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ are from the 'pip install' which I tried when argparse didnot work after the installation of Python in full (ie, with argparse files in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/)

[bitdancer]

Please show the output from

   print(argparse.__file__)

[ezio-melotti]

Closing for lack of feedback.
Feel free to re-open if/when more info are available.

[DavidFriedman]

I know this is 6 years too late, but I had this problem a few minutes ago on Python2.7. Googling didn't find me anything relevant except this bug entry. However, I found the cause myself: I had a test file named argparse.py (and an argparse.pyc) in the current directory (i.e. $PYTHONPATH) which was overriding the one in the main python library path. Once I renamed my argparse.py and argparse.pyc to something else, python found the real argparse and that message (the same one you saw) disappeared.