I'm trying to mix positional and non-positional arguments with a script using `argparse`, but I observe inconsistent behaviour.
The attached test runs fine when invoked with

test_argparse.py --info a a=b
test_argparse.py a a=b --info

but produces the error `error: unrecognized arguments: a=b` when invoked as

test_argparse.py a --info a=b

Is this intended behaviour ? If yes, is this documented ? If not, is there a way to make this work with existing `argparse` versions ?

Can you reproduce this without your PosArgsParser?

On 15.11.2017 12:54, R. David Murray wrote:
> Can you reproduce this without your PosArgsParser?
I can indeed (by simply commenting out the `action` argument to the
`add_argument()` calls).
That obviously results in all positional arguments being accumulated in
the `goal` member, as there is no logic to distinguish `a` from `a=b`
semantically.

It looks like https://bugs.python.org/issue14191 is a conversation about the same inconsistent behaviour. It is set to "fixed". Can you comment on this ? Should I follow the advice mentioned there about how to work around the issue ?

Ah, yes, I'd managed to forget about that issue, even though I was the one that finally committed the fix.

So, the alternate parser will be in 3.7.  In the meantime you can grab the code from the commit and put it in a local file, I think.  You'll doubtless have to tweak a few things to use it that way, but it should be fairly straightforward.