How can I capture user input and parse command line arguments in Python?

Utilizing User Input and Command Line Arguments in Python

In Python, capturing user input and reading command line arguments are essential tasks for interactive and flexible scripts. Here's a comprehensive guide to address these requirements.

User Input Handling

To capture user input, Python provides the cmd module. This module simplifies the creation of command-line interpreters with user-friendly prompts and autocompletion. For directly reading textual input from the user, utilize the raw_input function in Python 2 or input in Python 3.

# Python 2
text = raw_input("Enter some text: ")

# Python 3
text = input("Enter some text: ")

Command Line Argument Parsing

Python's sys.argv attribute stores command line arguments passed to the script. Access these arguments within the script as a list, where the first element is the script's filename, and subsequent elements are the arguments.

import sys
print(sys.argv)

For advanced command line option parsing, Python offers two modules:

• optparse (Deprecated): Use argparse instead due to deprecation in Python 2.7.
• getopt: Suitable for simple command line option parsing.

When working with files as command line input, consider using the fileinput module for flexibility.

Resources

For further reference, consult the official Python library documentation:

• https://docs.python.org/3/library/cmd.html
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#input
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/sys.html#sys.argv

The above is the detailed content of How can I capture user input and parse command line arguments in Python?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!