sys module - argv, but no argc ??

Peter Hansen peter at engcorp.com
Sun Aug 4 00:37:42 EDT 2002


TuxTrax wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 03 Aug 2002 08:57:43 -0400, Peter Hansen Wrote in
> > You're probably right that it's not the most elegant way.  The
> > most elegant way might be to use one of the existing modules,
> > perhaps getopt from the standard library, or Optik at
> > http://optik.sourceforge.net, and to avoid reinventing the wheel.
[...]
> It does seem to me that if I am parsing the command line for two
> options only, this snippet of code would be the way to go rather than
> import a library to do it. I am sure that if I was doing any serious
> parsing, I might want to use a library designed to do it. What do you think?

I think this is about as simple, and definitely more maintainable, 
especially since if you have two options now, you'll have five later.
Also less to debug:

import getopt
import sys

opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], 'G:S:')

server = newsgroup = 'not given'
for opt, val in opts:
    if opt == '-G':
        newsgroup = val
    elif opt == '-S':
        server = val

print 'Server: %s, newsgroup: %s' % (newsgroup, server)
print 'Other args: %s' % (args,)

What do you think?  :-)  (I think it's generally worth learning
to use the library modules, at least so you know when it is _really_
easier to do roll your own.)

-Peter



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