yt-dlp cannot download video using its id code: no such option: -0. How i can do it? about yt-dlp HOT 5 CLOSED

This is domumentation about that exact case: How do I download a video starting with a -?

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Add -- before you start with the list of IDs to indicate to yt-dlp that no more regular arguments follow.
So instead of

yt-dlp -F "-40JTHtTjCk"

You would run

yt-dlp -F -- "-40JTHtTjCk"

Alternatively, you can use -a to load in a list of URLs/IDs (docs).

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THANKS!

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Is the -- behaviour actually documented?

The optparse documentation says that its default behaviour is to support "... only the most common command-line syntax and semantics conventionally used under Unix" and then summarises these with no mention of the -- convention for ending the option list.

yt-dlp overrides the default argument processing with parse_known_args() but both implement the -- option break.

Since this isn't an obvious feature of the program or Python-based programs generally (nor is it universal even in GNU/POSIX despite ...), it should be in the help's option list, both here and upstream. Presumably the automatic generation of the list skips it as a prefix of other options?

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Wouldn't it be better to document the -- option internally?

It looks like the only easy way (say, without patching .print_help()) to do that would use the description/epilogoptions of_YoutubeDLOptionParser/optparse.OptionParser. yt-dl could use epilog` but that's spoken for here. Maybe:

            description='Use option -- to force treatment of all subsequent items as URLs',

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