Verbose level with argparse and multiple -v options

argparse supports action='count':

import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('-v', '--verbose', action='count', default=0)

for c in ['', '-v', '-v -v', '-vv', '-vv -v', '-v -v --verbose -vvvv']:
    print(parser.parse_args(c.split()))

Output:

Namespace(verbose=0)
Namespace(verbose=1)
Namespace(verbose=2)
Namespace(verbose=2)
Namespace(verbose=3)
Namespace(verbose=7)

The only very minor niggle is you have to explicitly set default=0 if you want no -v arguments to give you a verbosity level of 0 rather than None.

You could handle the first part of your question with append_const. Otherwise, you're probably stuck writing a custom action, as suggested in the fine answer by unutbu.

import argparse

ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
ap.add_argument('-v', action = 'append_const', const = 1)

for c in ['', '-v', '-v -v', '-vv', '-vv -v']:
    opt = ap.parse_args(c.split())
    opt.v = 0 if opt.v is None else sum(opt.v)
    print opt

Output:

Namespace(v=0)
Namespace(v=1)
Namespace(v=2)
Namespace(v=2)
Namespace(v=3)

You could do this with nargs='?' (to accept 0 or 1 arguments after the -v flag) and a custom action (to process the 0 or 1 arguments):

import sys
import argparse

class VAction(argparse.Action):
    def __init__(self, option_strings, dest, nargs=None, const=None, 
                 default=None, type=None, choices=None, required=False, 
                 help=None, metavar=None):
        super(VAction, self).__init__(option_strings, dest, nargs, const, 
                                      default, type, choices, required, 
                                      help, metavar)
        self.values = 0
    def __call__(self, parser, args, values, option_string=None):
        # print('values: {v!r}'.format(v=values))
        if values is None:
            self.values += 1
        else:
            try:
                self.values = int(values)
            except ValueError:
                self.values = values.count('v')+1
        setattr(args, self.dest, self.values)

# test from the command line
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('-v', nargs='?', action=VAction, dest='verbose')
args = parser.parse_args()
print('{} --> {}'.format(sys.argv[1:], args))

print('-'*80)

for test in ['-v', '-v -v', '-v -v -v', '-vv', '-vvv', '-v 2']:
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument('-v', nargs='?', action=VAction, dest='verbose')
    args=parser.parse_args([test])
    print('{:10} --> {}'.format(test, args))

Running script.py -v -v from the command line yields

['-v', '-v'] --> Namespace(verbose=2)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-v         --> Namespace(verbose=1)
-v -v      --> Namespace(verbose=2)
-v -v -v   --> Namespace(verbose=3)
-vv        --> Namespace(verbose=2)
-vvv       --> Namespace(verbose=3)
-v 2       --> Namespace(verbose=2)

Uncomment the print statement to see better what the VAction is doing.