I'm using argparse to set up the parameters for my python script. The last parameter is an "ID number" and it can be any mix of alphanumeric characters and hyphens.
Note: The program is a downloader/decoder for MMS messages and the "ID" parameter is provided by the cell network, so I can't change what it is.
I'm having a problem where, if the ID starts with a hyphen, argparse reads it as multiple parameters instead of as a string.
Here is the argparse portion of my code:
version = "0.4 alpha"
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
description="MMS Viewer v{0}: An MMS Downloader and Decoder".format(version),
epilog="https://github.com/NTICompass/mms-viewer"
)
parser.add_argument('-V', '--version', action='version', version=version)
parser.add_argument("file_or_phone", help="MMS File or phone number")
parser.add_argument("mmsid", nargs="?", help="MMS-Transaction-ID")
parser.add_argument('--debug', help="Print debugging info", action="store_true")
group = parser.add_mutually_exclusive_group()
group.add_argument('-x', '--extract', help="Extract image file(s)", action="store_true")
group.add_argument('-X', '--extract-original', help="Extract original image file(s) without using PIL", action="store_true")
args = parser.parse_args()
I run the program as such ./main.py 15555555555 abc123xyz (you can also run it as ./main.py file.bin).
The issue comes when the final parameter starts with hyphen, as shown:
./main.py 15555555555 -mTkKkr5e
It seems that argparse is reading the "-mTkKkr5e" as multiple different flags and thus gives the error:
usage: main.py [-h] [-V] [-p] [--debug] [-d | -x | -X] file_or_phone [mmsid]
main.py: error: unrecognized arguments: -mTkKkr5e
How can I fix this so that python/argparse will give me the final parameter as the string "-mTkKkr5e"?
