Just to be clear, I do not have any "script" I want to run. The call to setup is "it". I am doing something like apply(setup, [], kw) having set up the dictionary kw. I do not have a file and don't want to write one. My problem was how to specify the command and its arguments in this context. That could be one or more extra keyworded arguments, or it could be positional argument(s), since normally setup doesn't have any. I morally object to stuffing sys.argv, is all. So far, by the way, I have not encountered a single user who was not completely and utterly mystified by the traceback, which as a nice side effect generally caused the compile error they needed to see to scroll off screen. I think as a long term goal we should be trapping all errors inside setup and uttering something intelligent. The fact that one is in the call to setup is not exactly illuminating. Perhaps I missed a discussion of this sort since I can't really handle this lists' volume. If so, my apologies.