Help - command line arguments

[Steve Zatz]

I am new to Python and although I am sure that the following is obvious I
can't figure the following out or find an answer in any of the texts that I
have access to.

My question is:  Can you run a script that takes command line arguments from
within the Python shell or from the Python command line?

For example, something like:

test.py -a -b

runs fine from the *Windows XP* command prompt.

>From the Python command line, I can do the following:

import test
test.main()

which doesn't produce an exception but I can't figure out how to input the
command line arguments.

And from the Python Shell, just running test.main() produces a getopt
exception which does not occur when it runs from the Python command line.
(But in either case, I can't figure out how to use command line arguments.)

Again, any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.