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Trying to set a default value to arguments whose action is "append" causes argparse to raise AttributeError when such arguments are provided in the command line (see attached test case t1.py).
This happens because _AppendAction doesn't expect the presence of a default value for the argument: when the command line is parsed and the argument is found, _AppendAction attempts to append the new value to the list of old values, if any, or the old list. In case there is already a non-list default value, it attempts to append the new value to it, which raises the exception.
Is this intended behavior? If so, shouldn't ArgumentError be raised instead? It should also be easy to fix this issue otherwise, making _StoreAction ensure the old values are stored in a list before appending.

I don't think it's worth checking that you've passed in the correct type for the default parameter. That's not something that Python code typically does.
The error you get:
AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'append'
seem pretty clear. Pass in a list instead of a tuple, and it works as expected.

I agree with Eric. I've run in to this error, and immediatly figured out what I'd done wrong based on the existing error message.