Support for Automatically Parsing Negative Number Arguments
Author: thomask77Created Feb 13, 2024Updated Aug 12, 2026
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I would like to re-open the discussion from issue #555 and #1624.
My program makes heavy use of numeric arguments, including negative numbers, special float values (NaN, Infinity..), negative hex numbers, etc.
At the moment I'm using the following monkey patch as a work-around:
from click.parser import OptionParser, ParsingState
def _is_number(arg: str) -> bool:
try:
_ = int(arg, 0)
except ValueError:
try:
_ = float(arg)
except ValueError:
return False
return True
# Allow negative numbers as arguments
#
# Based on click/parser.py v8.1.7
#
def _process_args_for_options(self, state: ParsingState) -> None:
while state.rargs:
arg = state.rargs.pop(0)
if arg == "--":
return
elif arg[:1] in self._opt_prefixes and len(arg) > 1 and not _is_number(arg):
self._process_opts(arg, state)
elif self.allow_interspersed_args:
state.largs.append(arg)
else:
state.rargs.insert(0, arg)
return
# Monkey-patch the OptionParser class
#
OptionParser._process_args_for_options = _process_args_for_optionsIt would be nice, if click would offer an official mode that accepts negative numbers. I can also submit a PR, but would need further input on how to properly integrate the feature.
Source: pallets/click