All 15 Command-Line Interfaces (argparse) questions
More in Command-Line Interfaces (argparse)
How do you specify a default value and a type conversion for an argument? How do you restrict an argument's accepted values using the 'choices' parameter? How do you accept a variable number of arguments for a single flag, like a list of filenames? How do you implement boolean flags using action='store_true' and action='store_false'? How do you implement subcommands (like 'git commit' or 'git push') using argparse's add_subparsers()? How do you group related arguments visually in the generated --help output using argument groups? How do you implement mutually exclusive arguments, where the user must choose EXACTLY ONE of a set of flags? How do you write a custom 'type=' validation function for argparse that raises a properly-formatted error for invalid input? How would you build a CLI tool where some arguments can also be set via environment variables, falling back to a default if neither is provided? How do you customize argparse's automatically-generated usage and help text formatting, like preserving specific line breaks in the description?
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Python › Command-Line Interfaces (argparse)

How do you provide a short and a long form for the same flag, like -v and --verbose?

Intermediate

Answer

Pass both flag strings as positional arguments to add_argument() in the order you want them displayed; argparse treats them as aliases for the same destination attribute, and by default uses the first long-form name (stripped of leading dashes) as the attribute name unless you override it with 'dest'.
parser.add_argument("-v", "--verbose", action="store_true", help="Enable verbose output")
args = parser.parse_args(["-v"])
print(args.verbose)  # True -- both -v and --verbose set the same 'verbose' attribute
Real-world example Supporting both a quick short flag (-v) for interactive use and a clearer long flag (--verbose) for scripts, referencing the same option.

Common follow-ups: Can a single argument have more than two aliases, like -v, --verbose, and --debug all pointing to the same flag?

Data Types & Structures
All 15 Command-Line Interfaces (argparse) questions