---
id: argparse
version: "1.4.0"
license: Python Software Foundation License
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: abandoned
---

# argparse — Python command-line parsing library

License: permissive · Maintenance: abandoned · Popularity: top 1,000 on PyPI

## Install

pip install argparse
uv add argparse
poetry add argparse

## Description

The argparse module makes it easy to write user friendly command line
interfaces.

The program defines what arguments it requires, and argparse will figure out
how to parse those out of sys.argv. The argparse module also automatically
generates help and usage messages and issues errors when users give the
program invalid arguments.

As of Python >= 2.7 and >= 3.2, the argparse module is maintained within the
Python standard library. For users who still need to support Python < 2.7 or
< 3.2, it is also provided as a separate package, which tries to stay
compatible with the module in the standard library, but also supports older
Python versions.

Also, we can fix bugs here for users who are stuck on some non-current python
version, like e.g. 3.2.3 (which has bugs that were fixed in a later 3.2.x
release).

argparse is licensed under the Python license, for details see LICENSE.txt.


Compatibility
-------------

argparse should work on Python >= 2.3, it was tested on:

* 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7
* 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4


Installation
------------

Try one of these:

    python setup.py install

    easy_install argparse

    pip install argparse

    putting argparse.py in some...

## AI interpretation — verify before relying

Provides command-line argument parsing for Python programs, automatically generating help messages and validating user input. Backports the standard library argparse module for Python versions prior to 2.7 and 3.2.

Verdict: This package is production-stable but obsolete for any modern Python environment. The abandoned status (last commit 2021-05-13, no security vulnerabilities reported) and zero runtime dependencies mean it poses no immediate risk, but there is no reason to adopt it unless supporting legacy Python versions.

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