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

Yes, you can do it with sys.argv. Check out this link: http://docs.python.org/library/sys.html#sys.argv. But remember not to forget import sys, and then you can use it. import sys

# If there is an argument passed to your file
if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    # argv[1] has your filename
    filename = sys.argv[1]
    print (filename)

# Output...
# new-host:~ yanwchan$ python3.2 test.py text.txt
# text.txt

argv[0] has test.py

argv[1] has text.txt

Edit: However, I do some more research on this topic and found out this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4188500/1276534

As katrielalex points out, maybe you can look into argparse as well.? It provides a lot more functionality as well as safety check. Interesting information.

And here is a great tutorial: http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/argparse/

Answer 2

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!

Answer 3

Just a note for completeness: there is docopt now, which makes it really easy to write even complex command line interfaces by describing it in a simple language. Documenting and parsing the interface actually becomes the same task with docopt.

Answer 4

What you are looking for is something like the python argparse module

Or you can read the values directly using sys.argv

import sys
sys.argv[0] # the name of the command that was called
sys.argv[1] # the first argument, eg '--dev'
sys.argv[2] # the second...