How do I read a command line argument from Python?

Question

I am new to python programming, but basically I want to have a script where when given a file path from the command line (the file being a .csv file), the script will take this file and turn it into a list.

Code I have seen for this problem usually doesn't take the file from the command line, rather it just has the exact filename in the code. I want to use this code on many different files, so hard coding the file name into the program is not an option.

This question should have everything you need: stackoverflow.com/questions/1009860/…. For a very simple script you can see the sys.argv related answer, then level up to argparse which will be useful in the long term. — kristaps
– kristaps, Commented Jun 29, 2017 at 20:41

cs95 · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-29 20:02:16Z

2

The only change you need to make to the code that you've already found is this:

import sys
filepath = sys.argv[1]
... # process file

And now, you invoke your script like this: ./script.py /path/to/file.

sys.argv is used to read command line arguments. Optional commands start from index 1, because argv[0] stores the name of your script (script.py).

answered Jun 29, 2017 at 20:02

cs95

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