Is it possible to pass arguments to a python made exe at runtime?

Question

I\'m experimenting with file I/O. I have a small practice program that creates a text file when run. I packaged it with pyinstaller so that double clicking on the exe creates a

Answer 1

What you're looking for is either the sys module, or the optparse module.

sys will give you very basic control over command line args.

For example:

import sys

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv)>1:
        print sys.argv[1]

In the above example, if you were to open up a shell and type -

test.exe "myname"

The resultant output would be:

myname

Note that sys.argv[0] is the name of the script you are currently running. Each subsequent argument is defined by a space, so in your example above

test.exe -- myname

argv[0] = "test.exe"
argv[1] = "--"
argv[2] = "myname"

Optparse gives a much more robust solution that allows you to define command line switches with multiple options and defines variables that will store the appropriate options that can be accessed at runtime.

Re-writing your example:

from optparse import OptionParser

def makeFile(options = None): 
    if options:
        f = open('mytext.txt', 'w') #create text file in local dir
        print >> f, 'hello, ' + options.name + '! \nHow are ya?'
        f.close()
    else:
        f = open('mytext.txt', 'w') #create text file in local dir
        print >> f, 'hello, person! \nHow are ya?'
        f.close()



if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = OptionParser()
    parser.add_option('-n','--name',dest = 'name',
                      help='username to be printed out')
    (options,args) = parser.parse_args()
    makeFile(options)

You would run your program with :

test.exe -n myname

and the output (in myfile.txt) would be the expected:

Hello, myname!
How are ya?

Hope that helps!