The type of the object returned by get_default isn't converted to the specified type supplied to add_argument. I would expect the type to be the same.

get_default just returns the default attribute as it is stored in the Action.   Defaults are stored as given. 

During parsing the Action's default is placed in the args namespace at the start.  At the end, it checks if the value in the namespace is a string that matches the default (i.e. has been over written by user input).  Only then is it passed through the type function.

So, not a bug since you can just do `default = Path('file.txt')`?

Yes you can set the default to be any object, such as an evaluated string.  If it isn't a string it won't be passed through 'type'.

The purpose of the delayed evaluation that I described is to avoid unnecessary evaluations.  The worse case would be a write filetype.  You don't want to create (or over write) a default file if it never gets used.

(I intend to close this issue).