Python command line arguments

It's become clear to me that I need to learn more about the Python standard library. Lots of great stuff has been added. I did dir(str) today and saw methods that I never knew about.

In that vein, here is a short demo of optparse (docs). It should give you a good feeling for what's available (of course, there is more):

from optparse import OptionParser parser = OptionParser() parser.add_option('-f', '--file', dest='fn', help='write report to FILE', metavar='FILE') parser.add_option('-q', '--quiet', action='store_false', dest='v', default=True, help="don't print status messages to stdout") parser.add_option('-n', dest='n', type='int', help="need to input a number") options, args = parser.parse_args() print options, if args: print args, print

We can exercise it like this:

$ python options.py -f xyz {'n': None, 'fn': 'xyz', 'v': True} n$ python options.py -f xyz abc def {'n': None, 'fn': 'xyz', 'v': True} ['abc', 'def'] $ python options.py -fxyz {'n': None, 'fn': 'xyz', 'v': True} $ python options.py --file=xyz {'n': None, 'fn': 'xyz', 'v': True} $ python options.py -q {'n': None, 'fn': None, 'v': False} $ python options.py -n Usage: options.py [options] options.py: error: -n option requires an argument $ python options.py -n 7 {'n': 7, 'fn': None, 'v': True} $ python options.py --help Usage: options.py [options] Options: -h, --help show this help message and exit -f FILE, --file=FILE write report to FILE -q, --quiet don't print status messages to stdout -n N need to input a number