Disable/Remove argument in argparse

Question

Is it possible to remove or disable an argument in argparse, such that it does not show in the help? How?

It is easy to add new arguments:

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser() parser.add_argument('--arg1', help='Argument 1') parser.add_argument('--arg2', help='A second one') 

And I know you can override arguments with a new definition by specifying the "resolve" conflict handler:

#In one script that should stand-alone and include arg1:  parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(conflict_handler='resolve') parser.add_argument('--arg1', help='Argument 1') parser.add_argument('--arg2', help='A second one')  #In another script with similar options parser.add_argument('--arg1', help='New number 1') 

But this still includes arg1 in the help message and results of parse_args Is there anything like

#Wishful thinking #In another script with similar options, that shouldn't include arg1 parser.remove_argument('--arg1') 

Or another reasonably easy way to achieve this?

Also: Would the approach be different if the argument was a positional argument?

Note: the problem with removing arg1 after parsing as suggested here is that the argument still shows in the help

Answer 1

Is it possible to remove or disable an argument in argparse, such that it does not show in the help?

Set help to argparse.SUPPRESS when you add the argument, like this:

parser.add_argument('--arg1', help=argparse.SUPPRESS) 

This will prevent the argument from showing up in the default help output.