passing arguments to functions in python using argv

Question

Please find the below script

from sys import argv
script, contact_name, contact_no = argv

def operation()
    some code goes here

Since i run this script from command line, How do i pass contact_name and contact_no to operation function? I am using python 2.7

Answer 1

Command line arguments are passed as an array to the program, with the first being usually the program's location. So we skip argv[0] and move on to the other arguments.

This example doesn't include error checking.

from sys import argv

def operation(name, number):
    ...

contact_name = argv[1]
contact_no = argv[2]

operation(contact_name, contact_no)

Calling from command line:

python myscript.py John 5

Answer 2

You can use argparse to write user-friendly command-line interfaces.

import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='You can add a description here')

parser.add_argument('-n','--name', help='Your name',required=True)
args = parser.parse_args()

print args.name

To call the script use:

python script.py -n a_name

Answer 3

Allowing any no of arguments

from sys import argv

def operation(name, number, *args):
    print(name , number)

operation(*argv[1:])

Calling from command line:

python myscript.py Om 27

first and second argv ("Om" and 27 will pass to the name and number respectively) additional argv(if any) will to *args tupple variable.