passing arguments

[Steven Bethard]

James Stroud wrote:
> import sys
> 
> try:
>   arg1 = sys.argv[1]
> except IndexError:
>   print "This script takes an argument, you boob!"
>   sys.exit(1)

Also possible, to guarantee that exactly one argument was given:

try:
   arg1, = sys.argv
except ValueError:
   print "This script takes an argument, you boob!"
   sys.exit(1)

If you want to get, say, 3 arguments, just change that line to:

   arg1, arg2, arg3 = sys.argv

> OR, way better: See the optparse module.

Definitely.  Though depending on what kind of arguments your script 
takes, you still may need to deal with the args that optparse returns.

STeVe