Actually, you only need to use the default
argument to add_argument
as in this test.py
script:
import argparse
if __name__ == '__main__':
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('--example', default=1)
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args.example)
test.py --example
% 1
test.py --example 2
% 2
Details are here.