Passing multiple files with asterisk to python shell in Windows

Question

I\'m going through Google\'s Python exercises and I need to be able to do this from the command line:

python babynames.py --summaryfile baby*.html


        

Answer 1

Using argparse:

import argparse
parser=argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument(dest='wildcard',nargs='+')

print(parser.parse_args().wildcard)

Answer 2

Cross-platform:

import glob
if '*' in sys.argv[-1]:
     sys.argv[-1:] = glob.glob(sys.argv[-1])
continue...

Answer 3

Windows' command interpreter does not expand wildcards as UNIX shells do before passing them to the executed program or script.

python.exe -c "import sys; print sys.argv[1:]" *.txt

Result:

['*.txt']

Solution: Use the glob module.

from glob import glob
from sys import argv

for filename in glob(argv[1]):
    print filename

Answer 4

You can do it from UNIX-like shells, right in the from you wrote. In my case, Git Bash did the job - it accepts asterisks as input and process them correctly.