How to read/process command line arguments?

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

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

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).

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

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)

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

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.

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")