ImportError: No module named argparse

Question

I am trying to run a Python program but get the error

ImportError: No module named argparse

I found the question “argparse Python modules in cli” here on StackOverflow and tried the first comment, i.e. running the command

python -c "import argparse; print argparse"

which resulted in

<module 'argparse' from '/usr/lib/python2.7/argparse.pyc'>

For me it seems like there is Python 2.7 installed on the machine (of which I am not administrator) and the argparse module is present as well. So I wonder why the module is not found. On another machine the script runs as it should. In the post referred to above, there is the comment that maybe sys.path is broken. I have no clue what that means, or how I can change its value. Any ideas?

Answer 1

On a Debian system you can use the following command to install the argparse package:

sudo apt-get install python-argparse