Creating hidden arguments with Python argparse

Question

Yes, you can set the help option to add_argument to argparse.SUPPRESS. Here's an example from the argparse documentation:

>>> parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='frobble')
>>> parser.add_argument('--foo', help=argparse.SUPPRESS)
>>> parser.print_help()
usage: frobble [-h]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

I do it by adding an option to enable the hidden ones, and grab that by looking at sysv.args.

If you do this, you have to include the special arg you pick out of sys.argv directly in the parse list if you Assume the option is -s to enable hidden options.

parser.add_argument('-a', '-axis',
                    dest="axis", action="store_true", default=False,
                    help="Rotate the earth")
if "-s" in sys.argv or "-secret" in sys.argv:
    parser.add_argument('-s', '-secret',
                        dest="secret", action="store_true", default=False,
                        help="Enable secret options")
    parser.add_argument('-d', '-drill',
                        dest="drill", action="store_true", default=False,
                        help="drill baby, drill")