The argparse module makes it easy to write user-friendly command-line interfaces.

command_line_arguments.ipynb

{
  "cells": [
    {
      "metadata": {
        "ExecuteTime": {
          "start_time": "2017-05-23T06:17:20.567269Z",
          "end_time": "2017-05-23T06:17:20.646908Z"
        },
        "trusted": true
      },
      "cell_type": "code",
      "source": "import argparse\n\n\n# Create Parser object.\nparser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Process some integers.')\n\n# Add number of command line arguments.\nparser.add_argument(\n    'integers',\n    metavar='N',\n    type=int, nargs='+',\n    help='an integer for the accumulator',\n    )\nparser.add_argument(\n    '--sum',\n    dest='accumulate',\n    action='store_const',\n    const=sum,\n    default=max,\n    help='sum the integers (default: find the max)',\n    )\nparser.add_argument(\n    '--verbose', '-v',\n    action='store_true',\n    default=False,\n    help='print the result',\n    )\n\n# Parse command line arguments\nargs = parser.parse_args(['-v', '--sum', '7', '-1', '42'])\nif args.verbose:\n    print(args.accumulate(args.integers))",
      "execution_count": 1,
      "outputs": [
        {
          "output_type": "stream",
          "text": "48\n",
          "name": "stdout"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "metadata": {
        "ExecuteTime": {
          "start_time": "2017-05-23T06:17:20.649600Z",
          "end_time": "2017-05-23T06:17:20.688753Z"
        },
        "trusted": true
      },
      "cell_type": "code",
      "source": "args = parser.parse_args(['--help'])",
      "execution_count": 2,
      "outputs": [
        {
          "output_type": "stream",
          "text": "usage: ipykernel_launcher.py [-h] [--sum] [--verbose] N [N ...]\n\nProcess some integers.\n\npositional arguments:\n  N              an integer for the accumulator\n\noptional arguments:\n  -h, --help     show this help message and exit\n  --sum          sum the integers (default: find the max)\n  --verbose, -v  print the result\n",
          "name": "stdout"
        },
        {
          "output_type": "error",
          "ename": "SystemExit",
          "evalue": "0",
          "traceback": [
            "An exception has occurred, use %tb to see the full traceback.\n",
            "\u001b[0;31mSystemExit\u001b[0m\u001b[0;31m:\u001b[0m 0\n"
          ]
        },
        {
          "output_type": "stream",
          "text": "/dev/shm/u237002/anaconda36/envs/python36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py:2855: UserWarning: To exit: use 'exit', 'quit', or Ctrl-D.\n  warn(\"To exit: use 'exit', 'quit', or Ctrl-D.\", stacklevel=1)\n",
          "name": "stderr"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "kernelspec": {
      "name": "python3",
      "display_name": "Python 3",
      "language": "python"
    },
    "language_info": {
      "name": "python",
      "version": "3.6.1",
      "mimetype": "text/x-python",
      "codemirror_mode": {
        "name": "ipython",
        "version": 3
      },
      "pygments_lexer": "ipython3",
      "nbconvert_exporter": "python",
      "file_extension": ".py"
    },
    "toc": {
      "toc_threshold": 6,
      "toc_number_sections": true,
      "toc_cell": false,
      "toc_window_display": false
    },
    "gist": {
      "id": "",
      "data": {
        "description": "The argparse module makes it easy to write user-friendly command-line interfaces.",
        "public": true
      }
    }
  },
  "nbformat": 4,
  "nbformat_minor": 2
}