How do I access command line arguments in Python?

Python tutorial explains it:

import sys

print(sys.argv)

More specifically, if you run python example.py one two three:

>>> import sys
>>> print(sys.argv)
['example.py', 'one', 'two', 'three']

import sys

sys.argv[1:]

will give you a list of arguments (not including the name of the python file)

I highly recommend argparse which comes with Python 2.7 and later.

The argparse module reduces boiler plate code and makes your code more robust, because the module handles all standard use cases (including subcommands), generates the help and usage for you, checks and sanitize the user input - all stuff you have to worry about when you are using sys.argv approach. And it is for free (built-in).

Here a small example:

import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser("simple_example")
parser.add_argument("counter", help="An integer will be increased by 1 and printed.", type=int)
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args.counter + 1)

and the output for python prog.py -h

usage: simple_example [-h] counter

positional arguments:
  counter     counter will be increased by 1 and printed.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

and for python prog.py 1 as you would expect:

2