How do I pass command line arguments to a Python script?

Published on Aug. 22, 2023, 12:16 p.m.

To pass command line arguments to a Python script, you can use the sys.argv list. The first item in this list (sys.argv[0]) is the name of the script, and the subsequent items are the arguments.

For example, consider the following Python script named example.py:

import sys

arg1 = sys.argv[1]
arg2 = sys.argv[2]

print("Argument 1:", arg1)
print("Argument 2:", arg2)

If you run the script as follows:

python example.py hello world

Then, the output will be:

Argument 1: hello
Argument 2: world

In this case, hello and world are passed as command line arguments to the Python script.

Note that the arguments are always passed to the script as strings, so you may need to convert them to the appropriate data type if necessary. Additionally, you may want to add error handling to check whether the correct number and type of arguments have been passed.

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