How to make arguments mutually exclusive with Python’s argparse module

When working with Python’s argparse module, you might come across a scenario where you want to make certain arguments mutually exclusive. This means that only one of the arguments can be used at a time.

To achieve this, you can use the add_mutually_exclusive_group() method provided by the argparse module. This method allows you to create a group of arguments that are mutually exclusive.

Here’s an example of how you can use this method:

import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
group = parser.add_mutually_exclusive_group()
group.add_argument('--option1', action='store_true', help='Option 1 description')
group.add_argument('--option2', action='store_true', help='Option 2 description')

args = parser.parse_args()

if args.option1:
    # Do something with option 1
elif args.option2:
    # Do something with option 2
else:
    # Handle case where no option is provided

In this example, we create a mutually exclusive group using the add_mutually_exclusive_group() method. We then add two arguments, --option1 and --option2, to the group. This ensures that only one of these options can be used at a time.

By following this approach, you can easily make arguments mutually exclusive in your Python scripts using the argparse module.