[3.14] gh-54732: Make argparse error caused by empty rows in option files explicit (GH-136795) (#136818)

miss-islington · jdunter · AA-Turner · web-flow · commit 8d063f3d9228 · 2025-07-19T14:28:52.000Z
gh-54732: Make argparse error caused by empty rows in option files explicit (GH-136795) (cherry picked from commit 8ffc3ef) Co-authored-by: jdunter <2ve@mailbox.org> Co-authored-by: Adam Turner <9087854+AA-Turner@users.noreply.github.com>
diff --git a/Doc/library/argparse.rst b/Doc/library/argparse.rst
@@ -434,12 +434,18 @@ arguments they contain.  For example::
    >>> parser.parse_args(['-f', 'foo', '@args.txt'])
    Namespace(f='bar')
 
-Arguments read from a file must by default be one per line (but see also
+Arguments read from a file must be one per line by default (but see also
 :meth:`~ArgumentParser.convert_arg_line_to_args`) and are treated as if they
 were in the same place as the original file referencing argument on the command
 line.  So in the example above, the expression ``['-f', 'foo', '@args.txt']``
 is considered equivalent to the expression ``['-f', 'foo', '-f', 'bar']``.
 
+.. note::
+
+   Empty lines are treated as empty strings (``''``), which are allowed as values but
+   not as arguments. Empty lines that are read as arguments will result in an
+   "unrecognized arguments" error.
+
 :class:`ArgumentParser` uses :term:`filesystem encoding and error handler`
 to read the file containing arguments.
 
