Passing argument with a forward slash in python argparse

Question

I am using argparse to get command line arguments like:

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()

parser.add_argument('execCmd' , type=str)
args = parser.parse_args()

print(args)

Now when I run it from command line like this:

$python script.py "/bin/exec 10"

The result on the console is

Namespace(execCmd='C:/Program Files/usr/bin/exec 10')

It prepends the file path to the argument. The user may start the command with a '/' or they may not. Is there a way to handle this in argeparse such that the command is passed as it is without the file directory if the user adds '/'?

Answer 1

Anyways, argparse can take in functions for the type and you can do something like a check to see if the first character of what they pass in is a / or not.

So like:

def check_slash(string):
     if string and len(string) > 0 and string[0] == '/':
         return string
     else:
         return 'C:/Program Files/' + string

parser.add_argument('execCmd' , type=check_slash)

Answer 2

The issue is with bash as defined here: https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/issues/196

I was running this from git bash and therefore it was appending the gow path to the argument. Passing the argument as

$python script.py "//bin\exec 10"

works and so does leaving a space

$python script.py " /bin/exec 10"

This is not an issue if same command is run in powershell.