How do I access command line arguments in Python?

Question

I use python to create my project settings setup, but I need help getting the command line arguments.

I tried this on the terminal:

$python myfile.py var1 var2 var3

In my Python file, I want to use all variables that are input.

Answer 1

Some additional things that I can think of.

As @allsyed said sys.argv gives a list of components (including program name), so if you want to know the number of elements passed through command line you can use len() to determine it. Based on this, you can design exception/error messages if user didn't pass specific number of parameters.

Also if you looking for a better way to handle command line arguments, I would suggest you look at https://docs.python.org/2/howto/argparse.html

Answer 2

You can use sys.argv to get the arguments as a list.

If you need to access individual elements, you can use

sys.argv[i]  

where i is index, 0 will give you the python filename being executed. Any index after that are the arguments passed.

Answer 3

I highly recommend argparse which comes with Python 2.7 and later.

The argparse module reduces boiler plate code and makes your code more robust, because the module handles all standard use cases (including subcommands), generates the help and usage for you, checks and sanitize the user input - all stuff you have to worry about when you are using sys.argv approach. And it is for free (built-in).

Here a small example:

import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser("simple_example")
parser.add_argument("counter", help="An integer will be increased by 1 and printed.", type=int)
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args.counter + 1)

and the output for python prog.py -h

usage: simple_example [-h] counter

positional arguments:
  counter     counter will be increased by 1 and printed.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

and for python prog.py 1 as you would expect:

2

Answer 4

Python tutorial explains it:

import sys

print(sys.argv)

More specifically, if you run python example.py one two three:

>>> import sys
>>> print(sys.argv)
['example.py', 'one', 'two', 'three']

Answer 5

import sys

sys.argv[1:]

will give you a list of arguments (not including the name of the python file)

Answer 6

If you call it like this: $ python myfile.py var1 var2 var3

import sys

var1 = sys.argv[1]
var2 = sys.argv[2]
var3 = sys.argv[3]

Similar to arrays you also have sys.argv[0] which is always the current working directory.