Python Command Line Arguments

The sys module provides developers with an access point to command line arguments. Here is an example program that prints command line arguments to the console.

import sys

# The sys object has an argv field that is a
# list of the command line arguments passed to the program
# The first entry is the name of the script
print(sys.argv)

Here is the program’s output when run from the command line.

Patricks-MacBook-Pro:system stonesoup$ python testargv.py
['testargv.py']

The sys.argv object is a list of all command line arguments supplied to the script when run as a python program. Generally speaking, the first entry in the list is the name of the script. For more information on Python, see Programming Python: Powerful Object-Oriented Programming