Fix handling of -- as separator between positional args and flags

doc/whatsnew/fragments/7003.bugfix

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+Fixed handling of ``--`` as separator between positional arguments and flags.
+This was not actually fixed in 2.14.5.
+
+Closes #7003, Refs #7096

pylint/config/config_initialization.py

@@ -72,12 +72,17 @@ def _config_initialization(
     # the configuration file
     parsed_args_list = linter._parse_command_line_configuration(args_list)
 
+    # Remove the positional arguments separator from the list of arguments
+    try:
+        parsed_args_list.remove("--")
+    except ValueError:
+        pass
+
     # Check if there are any options that we do not recognize
     unrecognized_options: list[str] = []
     for opt in parsed_args_list:
         if opt.startswith("--"):
-            if len(opt) > 2:
-                unrecognized_options.append(opt[2:])
+            unrecognized_options.append(opt[2:])
         elif opt.startswith("-"):
             unrecognized_options.append(opt[1:])
     if unrecognized_options:

tests/config/test_config.py

@@ -148,11 +148,10 @@ def test_short_verbose(capsys: CaptureFixture) -> None:
     assert "Using config file" in output.err
 
 
-def test_argument_separator(capsys: CaptureFixture) -> None:
+def test_argument_separator() -> None:
     """Check that we support using '--' to separate argument types.
 
     Reported in https://github.com/PyCQA/pylint/issues/7003.
     """
-    Run(["--", str(EMPTY_MODULE)], exit=False)
-    output = capsys.readouterr()
-    assert not output.err
+    runner = Run(["--", str(EMPTY_MODULE)], exit=False)
+    assert not runner.linter.stats.by_msg