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In Python, how can we find out the command line arguments that were provided for a script, and process them?
For some more specific examples, see Implementing a "[command] [action] [parameter]" style command-line interfaces? and How do I format positional argument help using Python's optparse?.
import sys
print("\n".join(sys.argv))
sys.argv is a list that contains all the arguments passed to the script on the command line. sys.argv[0] is the script name.
Basically,
import sys
print(sys.argv[1:])
The canonical solution in the standard library is argparse (docs):
Here is an example:
from argparse import ArgumentParser
parser = ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument("-f", "--file", dest="filename",
help="write report to FILE", metavar="FILE")
parser.add_argument("-q", "--quiet",
action="store_false", dest="verbose", default=True,
help="don't print status messages to stdout")
args = parser.parse_args()
argparse supports (among other things):
Multiple options in any order.
Short and long options.
Default values.
Generation of a usage help message.
Just going around evangelizing for argparse which is better for these reasons.. essentially:
(copied from the link)
argparse module can handle positional
and optional arguments, while
optparse can handle only optional
arguments
argparse isn’t dogmatic about
what your command line interface
should look like - options like -file
or /file are supported, as are
required options. Optparse refuses to
support these features, preferring
purity over practicality
argparse produces more
informative usage messages, including
command-line usage determined from
your arguments, and help messages for
both positional and optional
arguments. The optparse module
requires you to write your own usage
string, and has no way to display
help for positional arguments.
argparse supports action that
consume a variable number of
command-line args, while optparse
requires that the exact number of
arguments (e.g. 1, 2, or 3) be known
in advance
argparse supports parsers that
dispatch to sub-commands, while
optparse requires setting
allow_interspersed_args and doing the
parser dispatch manually
And my personal favorite:
argparse allows the type and
action parameters to add_argument()
to be specified with simple
callables, while optparse requires
hacking class attributes like
STORE_ACTIONS or CHECK_METHODS to get
proper argument checking
There is also argparse stdlib module (an "impovement" on stdlib's optparse module). Example from the introduction to argparse:
# script.py
import argparse
if __name__ == '__main__':
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument(
'integers', metavar='int', type=int, choices=range(10),
nargs='+', help='an integer in the range 0..9')
parser.add_argument(
'--sum', dest='accumulate', action='store_const', const=sum,
default=max, help='sum the integers (default: find the max)')
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args.accumulate(args.integers))
Usage:
$ script.py 1 2 3 4
4
$ script.py --sum 1 2 3 4
10
If you need something fast and not very flexible
main.py:
import sys
first_name = sys.argv[1]
last_name = sys.argv[2]
print("Hello " + first_name + " " + last_name)
Then run python main.py James Smith
to produce the following output:
Hello James Smith
The docopt library is really slick. It builds an argument dict from the usage string for your app.
Eg from the docopt readme:
"""Naval Fate.
Usage:
naval_fate.py ship new <name>...
naval_fate.py ship <name> move <x> <y> [--speed=<kn>]
naval_fate.py ship shoot <x> <y>
naval_fate.py mine (set|remove) <x> <y> [--moored | --drifting]
naval_fate.py (-h | --help)
naval_fate.py --version
Options:
-h --help Show this screen.
--version Show version.
--speed=<kn> Speed in knots [default: 10].
--moored Moored (anchored) mine.
--drifting Drifting mine.
"""
from docopt import docopt
if __name__ == '__main__':
arguments = docopt(__doc__, version='Naval Fate 2.0')
print(arguments)
One way to do it is using sys.argv. This will print the script name as the first argument and all the other parameters that you pass to it.
import sys
for arg in sys.argv:
print arg
#set default args as -h , if no args:
if len(sys.argv) == 1: sys.argv[1:] = ["-h"]
I use optparse myself, but really like the direction Simon Willison is taking with his recently introduced optfunc library. It works by:
"introspecting a function
definition (including its arguments
and their default values) and using
that to construct a command line
argument parser."
So, for example, this function definition:
def geocode(s, api_key='', geocoder='google', list_geocoders=False):
is turned into this optparse help text:
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-l, --list-geocoders
-a API_KEY, --api-key=API_KEY
-g GEOCODER, --geocoder=GEOCODER
I like getopt from stdlib, eg:
try:
opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], 'h', ['help'])
except getopt.GetoptError, err:
usage(err)
for opt, arg in opts:
if opt in ('-h', '--help'):
usage()
if len(args) != 1:
usage("specify thing...")
Lately I have been wrapping something similiar to this to make things less verbose (eg; making "-h" implicit).
As you can see optparse "The optparse module is deprecated with and will not be developed further; development will continue with the argparse module."
Pocoo's click is more intuitive, requires less boilerplate, and is at least as powerful as argparse.
The only weakness I've encountered so far is that you can't do much customization to help pages, but that usually isn't a requirement and docopt seems like the clear choice when it is.
import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Process some integers.')
parser.add_argument('integers', metavar='N', type=int, nargs='+',
help='an integer for the accumulator')
parser.add_argument('--sum', dest='accumulate', action='store_const',
const=sum, default=max,
help='sum the integers (default: find the max)')
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args.accumulate(args.integers))
Assuming the Python code above is saved into a file called prog.py
$ python prog.py -h
Ref-link: https://docs.python.org/3.3/library/argparse.html
You may be interested in a little Python module I wrote to make handling of command line arguments even easier (open source and free to use) - Commando
Yet another option is argh. It builds on argparse, and lets you write things like:
import argh
# declaring:
def echo(text):
"Returns given word as is."
return text
def greet(name, greeting='Hello'):
"Greets the user with given name. The greeting is customizable."
return greeting + ', ' + name
# assembling:
parser = argh.ArghParser()
parser.add_commands([echo, greet])
# dispatching:
if __name__ == '__main__':
parser.dispatch()
It will automatically generate help and so on, and you can use decorators to provide extra guidance on how the arg-parsing should work.
I recommend looking at docopt as a simple alternative to these others.
docopt is a new project that works by parsing your --help usage message rather than requiring you to implement everything yourself. You just have to put your usage message in the POSIX format.
Also with python3 you might find convenient to use Extended Iterable Unpacking to handle optional positional arguments without additional dependencies:
try:
_, arg1, arg2, arg3, *_ = sys.argv + [None] * 2
except ValueError:
print("Not enough arguments", file=sys.stderr) # unhandled exception traceback is meaningful enough also
exit(-1)
The above argv unpack makes arg2 and arg3 "optional" - if they are not specified in argv, they will be None, while if the first is not specified, ValueError will be thouwn:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "test.py", line 3, in <module>
_, arg1, arg2, arg3, *_ = sys.argv + [None] * 2
ValueError: not enough values to unpack (expected at least 4, got 3)
My solution is entrypoint2. Example:
from entrypoint2 import entrypoint
#entrypoint
def add(file, quiet=True):
''' This function writes report.
:param file: write report to FILE
:param quiet: don't print status messages to stdout
'''
print file,quiet
help text:
usage: report.py [-h] [-q] [--debug] file
This function writes report.
positional arguments:
file write report to FILE
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-q, --quiet don't print status messages to stdout
--debug set logging level to DEBUG
import sys
# Command line arguments are stored into sys.argv
# print(sys.argv[1:])
# I used the slice [1:] to print all the elements except the first
# This because the first element of sys.argv is the program name
# So the first argument is sys.argv[1], the second is sys.argv[2] ecc
print("File name: " + sys.argv[0])
print("Arguments:")
for i in sys.argv[1:]:
print(i)
Let's name this file command_line.py and let's run it:
C:\Users\simone> python command_line.py arg1 arg2 arg3 ecc
File name: command_line.py
Arguments:
arg1
arg2
arg3
ecc
Now let's write a simple program, sum.py:
import sys
try:
print(sum(map(float, sys.argv[1:])))
except:
print("An error has occurred")
Result:
C:\Users\simone> python sum.py 10 4 6 3
23
This handles simple switches, value switches with optional alternative flags.
import sys
# [IN] argv - array of args
# [IN] switch - switch to seek
# [IN] val - expecting value
# [IN] alt - switch alternative
# returns value or True if val not expected
def parse_cmd(argv,switch,val=None,alt=None):
for idx, x in enumerate(argv):
if x == switch or x == alt:
if val:
if len(argv) > (idx+1):
if not argv[idx+1].startswith('-'):
return argv[idx+1]
else:
return True
//expecting a value for -i
i = parse_cmd(sys.argv[1:],"-i", True, "--input")
//no value needed for -p
p = parse_cmd(sys.argv[1:],"-p")
Several of our biotechnology clients have posed these two questions recently:
How can we execute a Python script as a command?
How can we pass input values to a Python script when it is executed as a command?
I have included a Python script below which I believe answers both questions. Let's assume the following Python script is saved in the file test.py:
#
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# file name: test.py
#
# input values: data - location of data to be processed
# date - date data were delivered for processing
# study - name of the study where data originated
# logs - location where log files should be written
#
# macOS usage:
#
# python3 test.py "/Users/lawrence/data" "20220518" "XYZ123" "/Users/lawrence/logs"
#
# Windows usage:
#
# python test.py "D:\data" "20220518" "XYZ123" "D:\logs"
#
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# import needed modules...
#
import sys
import datetime
def main(argv):
#
# print message that process is starting...
#
print("test process starting at", datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%d %H:%M"))
#
# set local values from input values...
#
data = sys.argv[1]
date = sys.argv[2]
study = sys.argv[3]
logs = sys.argv[4]
#
# print input arguments...
#
print("data value is", data)
print("date value is", date)
print("study value is", study)
print("logs value is", logs)
#
# print message that process is ending...
#
print("test process ending at", datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%d %H:%M"))
#
# call main() to begin processing...
#
if __name__ == '__main__':
main(sys.argv)
The script can be executed on a macOS computer in a Terminal shell as shown below and the results will be printed to standard output (be sure the current directory includes the test.py file):
$ python3 test.py "/Users/lawrence/data" "20220518" "XYZ123" "/Users/lawrence/logs"
test process starting at 20220518 16:51
data value is /Users/lawrence/data
date value is 20220518
study value is XYZ123
logs value is /Users/lawrence/logs
test process ending at 20220518 16:51
The script can also be executed on a Windows computer in a Command Prompt as shown below and the results will be printed to standard output (be sure the current directory includes the test.py file):
D:\scripts>python test.py "D:\data" "20220518" "XYZ123" "D:\logs"
test process starting at 20220518 17:20
data value is D:\data
date value is 20220518
study value is XYZ123
logs value is D:\logs
test process ending at 20220518 17:20
This script answers both questions posed above and is a good starting point for developing scripts that will be executed as commands with input values.
Reason for the new answer:
Existing answers specify multiple options.
Standard option is to use argparse, a few answers provided examples from the documentation, and one answer suggested the advantage of it. But all fail to explain the answer adequately/clearly to the actual question by OP, at least for newbies.
An example of argparse:
import argparse
def load_config(conf_file):
pass
if __name__ == '__main__':
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
//Specifies one argument from the command line
//You can have any number of arguments like this
parser.add_argument("conf_file", help="configuration file for the application")
args = parser.parse_args()
config = load_config(args.conf_file)
Above program expects a config file as an argument. If you provide it, it will execute happily. If not, it will print the following
usage: test.py [-h] conf_file
test.py: error: the following arguments are required: conf_file
You can have the option to specify if the argument is optional.
You can specify the expected type for the argument using type key
parser.add_argument("age", type=int, help="age of the person")
You can specify default value for the arguments by specifying default key
This document will help you to understand it to an extent.
This Question is continuation of old question #: how to access nargs of optparse-add_action?
As that question was answered for what it was in-tented.
Brief:
Suppose if I am using add_option utility like below:
parser.add_option('-c','--categories', dest='Categories', nargs=4 )
Is there a way to modify nargs of add_option() from user input using raw_input.?
EDIT:
I will give a clear difference between my "previous question need" and "this question need".
First question case:
My script will ask for user inputs if user has provided no inputs, i.e.,He has just run
#./commandparser.py
Second Question case requirement is:
when i run my script ./commandparser.py -c abc bac cad
it throws error: commandparser.py: error: -c option requires 4 arguments and exit the script.
Instead of throwing error and exit the script. I want some mechanism so that it asks user to input remaining arguments i.e., 4th argument without exiting the script.
Are you, by any chance, trying to accept a variable number of values for this option? That is, use the 'rawinput' to set nargs, which is then used to parse the command line?
The optparse documentation has an example of using a custom callback to handle a variable number of values:
https://docs.python.org/2/library/optparse.html#callback-example-6-variable-arguments
argparse, on the other hand, does allow a variable number of values, with nargs values like '?' (0 or 1), '+' (1 or more), '*' (0 or more).
Since I'm more conversant with argparse I'll sketch out an interactive script to handle your revised requirement:
import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='PROG')
parser.add_argument('-c', '--categories', nargs='+', help='4 categories', default=[])
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args)
categories = args.categories
while len(categories)<4:
print(parser.format_usage())
x = raw_input('enter %s categories: '%(4-len(categories))).split()
categories.extend(x)
print('categories', categories)
If 'categories' are the only arguments, you could replace all of the argparse stuff (or optparse) with categories = sys.argv[1:], or [2:] if you still expect the '-c' flag.
Or using optparse (adapted from the docs example for variable length callback):
def vararg_callback(option, opt_str, value, parser):
value = []
for arg in parser.rargs:
# stop on --foo like options
if arg[:2] == "--" and len(arg) > 2:
break
# stop on -a (ignore the floats issue)
if arg[:1] == "-" and len(arg) > 1:
break
value.append(arg)
del parser.rargs[:len(value)]
setattr(parser.values, option.dest, value)
def use_opt():
import optparse
parser = optparse.OptionParser()
parser.add_option('-c','--categories', dest='categories', action="callback", callback=vararg_callback)
(options, args) = parser.parse_args()
print options, args
return options, args, parser
args, rest, parser = use_opt()
How can I make a command line, so I can execute my program on Windows with some parameters...
For example:
C:/Program/App.exe -safemode
have a look at the getopt and optparse modules from the standard lib, many good things could be also said about more advanced argparse module.
Generally you just need to access sys.argv.
I sense that you also want to generate an 'executable' that you can run standalone.... For that you use py2exe
Here is a complete example.py:
import optparse
parser = optparse.OptionParser()
parser.add_option("-s", "--safemode",
default = False,
action = "store_true",
help = "Should program run in safe mode?")
parser.add_option("-w", "--width",
type = "int",
default = 1024,
help = "Desired screen width in pixels")
options, arguments = parser.parse_args()
if options.safemode:
print "Proceeding safely"
else:
print "Proceeding dangerously"
if options.width == 1024:
print "running in 1024-pixel mode"
elif options.width == 1920:
print "running in 1920-pixel mode"
And here is a complete setup.py that will turn the above example.py into example.exe (in the dist subdirectory):
from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe
import sys
sys.argv.append('py2exe')
setup(
options = {'py2exe': dict(bundle_files=1, optimize=2)},
console = ["example.py"],
zipfile = None,
)
Are you speaking about parameter passed to a python script?
'couse you can access them by
import sys
print sys.argv
Or can use a more sophisticated getopt module.
Not a python guy (yet anyway) but my Google-fu found this assuming you meant "handling command line arguments":
http://www.faqs.org/docs/diveintopython/kgp_commandline.html
Use optparse.OptionParser.
from optparse import OptionParser
import sys
def make_cli_parser():
"""Makes the parser for the command line interface."""
usage = "python %prog [OPTIONS]"
cli_parser = OptionParser(usage)
cli_parser.add_option('-s', '--safemode', action='store_true',
help="Run in safe mode")
return cli_parser
def main(argv):
cli_parser = make_cli_parser()
opts, args = cli_parser.parse_args(argv)
if opts.safemode:
print "Running in safe mode."
else:
print "Running with the devil."
if __name__ == '__main__':
main(sys.argv[1:])
In use:
$ python opt.py
Running with the devil.
$ python opt.py -s
Running in safe mode.
$ python opt.py -h
Usage: python opt.py [OPTIONS]
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-s, --safemode Run in safe mode
Or are you just asking how to open a command line?
go to the start menu, click "run" (or just type, in Windows 7), type "cmd"
This will open up a command shell.
Given that your question is tagged python, I'm not sure it's going to be compiled into an exe, you might have to type "python (your source here).py -safemode".
The other comments addressed how to handle parameters. If you want to make your python program an exe you might want to look at py2exe.
This is not required but you mentioned App.exe and not App.py
You are asking a question that has several levels of answers.
First, command line is passed into the array sys.argv. argv is a historic name from C and Unix languages. So:
~/p$ cat > args.py
import sys
print "You have ", len(sys.argv), "arguments."
for i in range(len(sys.argv)):
print "argv[", i, "] = ", sys.argv[i]
~/p$ python args.py 34 2 2 2
You have 5 arguments.
argv[ 0 ] = args.py
argv[ 1 ] = 34
argv[ 2 ] = 2
argv[ 3 ] = 2
argv[ 4 ] = 2
This works both in MS Windows and Unix.
Second, you might be asking "How do I get nice arguments? Have it handle /help in
MS Windows or --help in Linux?"
Well, there are three choices which try to do what you want. Two, optparse and getopt are already in the standard library, while argparse is on its way. All three of these are libraries that start with the sys.argv array of strings, a description of you command line arguments, and return some sort of data structure or class from which
you can get the options you mean.
getopt does the minimal job. It does not provide "/help" or "--help".
optparse does a more detailed job. It provides "/help" and both short and long
versions of options, e.g., "-v" and "--verbose".
argparse handles the kitchen sink, including "/help", short and long commands,
and also subcommand structures, as you see in source control "git add ....", and
positional arguments.
As you move to the richer parsing, you need to give the parser more details about what you want the command line arguments to be. For example, you need to pass a long written
description of the argument if you want the --help argument to print it.
Third, you might be asking for a tool that just deals with the options from the command
line, environment variables and configuration files. Python currently has separate tools
for each of these. Perhaps I'll write a unified one, You will need:
- Command line arguments parsed by argparse, or getopt, etc.
- Environment variables, from os.environ[]
- Configuration files from ConfigFile or plistlib, etc.
and build your own answer to "what are the settings"?
Hope this fully answers your questions
One of the many ways:
import sys
print sys.argv
>>>python arg.py arg1 arg2
['arg.py', 'arg1', 'arg2']
sys.argv is a list containing all the arguments (also the name of script/program) as string.
I have an application that allows you to send event data to a custom script. You simply lay out the command line arguments and assign what event data goes with what argument. The problem is that there is no real flexibility here. Every option you map out is going to be used, but not every option will necessarily have data. So when the application builds the string to send to the script, some of the arguments are blank and python's OptionParser errors out with "error: --someargument option requires an argument"
Being that there are over 200 points of data, it's not like I can write separate scripts to handle each combination of possible arguments (it would take 2^200 scripts). Is there a way to handle empty arguments in python's optionparser?
Sorry, misunderstood the question with my first answer. You can accomplish the ability to have optional arguments to command line flags use the callback action type when you define an option. Use the following function as a call back (you will likely wish to tailor to your needs) and configure it for each of the flags that can optionally receive an argument:
import optparse
def optional_arg(arg_default):
def func(option,opt_str,value,parser):
if parser.rargs and not parser.rargs[0].startswith('-'):
val=parser.rargs[0]
parser.rargs.pop(0)
else:
val=arg_default
setattr(parser.values,option.dest,val)
return func
def main(args):
parser=optparse.OptionParser()
parser.add_option('--foo',action='callback',callback=optional_arg('empty'),dest='foo')
parser.add_option('--file',action='store_true',default=False)
return parser.parse_args(args)
if __name__=='__main__':
import sys
print main(sys.argv)
Running from the command line you'll see this:
# python parser.py
(<Values at 0x8e42d8: {'foo': None, 'file': False}>, [])
# python parser.py --foo
(<Values at 0x8e42d8: {'foo': 'empty', 'file': False}>, [])
# python parser.py --foo bar
(<Values at 0x8e42d8: {'foo': 'bar', 'file': False}>, [])
Yes, there is an argument to do so when you add the option:
from optparse import OptionParser
parser = OptionParser()
parser.add_option("--SomeData",action="store", dest="TheData", default='')
Give the default argument the value you want the option to have it is to be specified but optionally have an argument.
I don't think optparse can do this. argparse is a different (non-standard) module that can handle situations like this where the options have optional values.
With optparse you have to either have to specify the option including it's value or leave out both.
Optparse already allows you to pass the empty string as an option argument. So if possible, treat the empty string as "no value". For long options, any of the following work:
my_script --opt= --anotheroption
my_script --opt='' --anotheroption
my_script --opt="" --anotheroption
my_script --opt '' --anotheroption
my_script --opt "" --anotheroption
For short-style options, you can use either of:
my_script -o '' --anotheroption
my_script -o "" --anotheroption
Caveat: this has been tested under Linux and should work the same under other Unixlike systems; Windows handles command line quoting differently and might not accept all of the variants listed above.
Mark Roddy's solution would work, but it requires attribute modification of a parser object during runtime, and has no support for alternative option formattings other than - or --.
A slightly less involved solution is to modify the sys.argv array before running optparse and insert an empty string ("") after a switch which doesn't need to have arguments.
The only constraint of this method is that you have your options default to a predictable value other than the one you are inserting into sys.argv (I chose None for the example below, but it really doesn't matter).
The following code creates an example parser and set of options, extracts an array of allowed switches from the parser (using a little bit of instance variable magic), and then iterates through sys.argv, and every time it finds an
allowed switch, it checks to see if it was given without any arguments following it . If there is no argument after a switch, the empty string will be inserted on the command
line. After altering sys.argv, the parser is invoked, and you can check for options whose values are "", and act accordingly.
#Instantiate the parser, and add some options; set the options' default values to None, or something predictable that
#can be checked later.
PARSER_DEFAULTVAL = None
parser = OptionParser(usage="%prog -[MODE] INPUT [options]")
#This method doesn't work if interspersed switches and arguments are allowed.
parser.allow_interspersed_args = False
parser.add_option("-d", "--delete", action="store", type="string", dest="to_delete", default=PARSER_DEFAULTVAL)
parser.add_option("-a", "--add", action="store", type="string", dest="to_add", default=PARSER_DEFAULTVAL)
#Build a list of allowed switches, in this case ['-d', '--delete', '-a', '--add'] so that you can check if something
#found on sys.argv is indeed a valid switch. This is trivial to make by hand in a short example, but if a program has
#a lot of options, or if you want an idiot-proof way of getting all added options without modifying a list yourself,
#this way is durable. If you are using OptionGroups, simply run the loop below with each group's option_list field.
allowed_switches = []
for opt in parser.option_list:
#Add the short (-a) and long (--add) form of each switch to the list.
allowed_switches.extend(opt._short_opts + opt._long_opts)
#Insert empty-string values into sys.argv whenever a switch without arguments is found.
for a in range(len(sys.argv)):
arg = sys.argv[a]
#Check if the sys.argv value is a switch
if arg in allowed_switches:
#Check if it doesn't have an accompanying argument (i.e. if it is followed by another switch, or if it is last
#on the command line)
if a == len(sys.argv) - 1 or argv[a + 1] in allowed_switches:
sys.argv.insert(a + 1, "")
options, args = parser.parse_args()
#If the option is present (i.e. wasn't set to the default value)
if not (options.to_delete == PARSER_DEFAULTVAL):
if options.droptables_ids_csv == "":
#The switch was not used with any arguments.
...
else:
#The switch had arguments.
...
After checking that the cp command understands e.g. --backup=simple but not --backup simple, I answered the problem like this:
import sys
from optparse import OptionParser
def add_optval_option(pog, *args, **kwargs):
if 'empty' in kwargs:
empty_val = kwargs.pop('empty')
for i in range(1, len(sys.argv)):
a = sys.argv[i]
if a in args:
sys.argv.insert(i+1, empty_val)
break
pog.add_option(*args, **kwargs)
def main(args):
parser = OptionParser()
add_optval_option(parser,
'--foo', '-f',
default='MISSING',
empty='EMPTY',
help='"EMPTY" if given without a value. Note: '
'--foo=VALUE will work; --foo VALUE will *not*!')
o, a = parser.parse_args(args)
print 'Options:'
print ' --foo/-f:', o.foo
if a[1:]:
print 'Positional arguments:'
for arg in a[1:]:
print ' ', arg
else:
print 'No positional arguments'
if __name__=='__main__':
import sys
main(sys.argv)
Self-advertisement: This is part of the opo module of my thebops package ... ;-)
This question already has answers here:
How to read/process command line arguments?
(22 answers)
Closed last month.
What would be an easy expression to process command line arguments if I'm expecting anything like 001 or 999 (let's limit expectations to 001...999 range for this time), and few other arguments passed, and would like to ignore any unexpected?
I understand if for example I need to find out if "debug" was passed among parameters it'll be something like that:
if 'debug' in argv[1:]:
print 'Will be running in debug mode.'
How to find out if 009 or 575 was passed?
All those are expected calls:
python script.py
python script.py 011
python script.py 256 debug
python script.py 391 xls
python script.py 999 debug pdf
At this point I don't care about calls like that:
python script.py 001 002 245 568
python script.py some unexpected argument
python script.py 0001
python script.py 02
...first one - because of more than one "numeric" argument; second - because of... well, unexpected arguments; third and fourth - because of non-3-digits arguments.
As others answered, optparse is the best option, but if you just want quick code try something like this:
import sys, re
first_re = re.compile(r'^\d{3}$')
if len(sys.argv) > 1:
if first_re.match(sys.argv[1]):
print "Primary argument is : ", sys.argv[1]
else:
raise ValueError("First argument should be ...")
args = sys.argv[2:]
else:
args = ()
# ... anywhere in code ...
if 'debug' in args:
print 'debug flag'
if 'xls' in args:
print 'xls flag'
EDIT: Here's an optparse example because so many people are answering optparse without really explaining why, or explaining what you have to change to make it work.
The primary reason to use optparse is it gives you more flexibility for expansion later, and gives you more flexibility on the command line. In other words, your options can appear in any order and usage messages are generated automatically. However to make it work with optparse you need to change your specifications to put '-' or '--' in front of the optional arguments and you need to allow all the arguments to be in any order.
So here's an example using optparse:
import sys, re, optparse
first_re = re.compile(r'^\d{3}$')
parser = optparse.OptionParser()
parser.set_defaults(debug=False,xls=False)
parser.add_option('--debug', action='store_true', dest='debug')
parser.add_option('--xls', action='store_true', dest='xls')
(options, args) = parser.parse_args()
if len(args) == 1:
if first_re.match(args[0]):
print "Primary argument is : ", args[0]
else:
raise ValueError("First argument should be ...")
elif len(args) > 1:
raise ValueError("Too many command line arguments")
if options.debug:
print 'debug flag'
if options.xls:
print 'xls flag'
The differences here with optparse and your spec is that now you can have command lines like:
python script.py --debug --xls 001
and you can easily add new options by calling parser.add_option()
Have a look at the optparse module. Dealing with sys.argv yourself is fine for really simple stuff, but it gets out of hand quickly.
Note that you may find optparse easier to use if you can change your argument format a little; e.g. replace debug with --debug and xls with --xls or --output=xls.
optparse is your best friend for parsing the command line. Also look into argparse; it's not in the standard library, though.
If you want to implement actual command line switches, give getopt a look. It's incredibly simple to use, too.
Van Gale is largely correct in using the regular expression against the argument. However, it is NOT absolutely necessary to make everything an option when using optparse, which splits sys.argv into options and arguments, based on whether a "-" or "--" is in front or not. Some example code to go through just the arguments:
import sys
import optparse
claParser = optparse.OptionParser()
claParser.add_option(
(opts, args) = claParser.parse_args()
if (len(args) >= 1):
print "Arguments:"
for arg in args:
print " " + arg
else:
print "No arguments"
sys.exit(0)
Yes, the args array is parsed much the same way as sys.argv would be, but the ability to easily add options if needed has been added. For more about optparse, check out the relevant Python doc.