Bug report

In the "Arguments Containing -" section of the argparse documentation it says:

positional arguments may only begin with - if they look like negative numbers and there are no options in the parser that look like negative numbers

However, negative numbers with exponent notation are rejected. I feel this is a bug.

With file apbug.py containing

#!/usr/bin/env python3.10

import argparse

ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
ap.add_argument("maybe_neg", default=False)

print("try -3.0"); args = ap.parse_args(args=["-3.0",])
print("try -3.0e0"); args = ap.parse_args(args=["-3.0e0",])

execution results in

$ ./apbug.py 
try -3.0
try -3.0e0
usage: apbug.py [-h] maybe_neg
apbug.py: error: the following arguments are required: maybe_neg

Your environment

• CPython versions tested on: 3.10
• Operating system and architecture: macOS 12.6 x86_64