pargv/README.md

pargv

Parse command line arguments into a list of args and a dict of kwargs.

Installation

pip install pargv

Usage

By default, pargv.parse_args() uses sys.argv as command line arguments. It can be used in the following way.

from pargv import parse_args

args, kwargs = parse_args()

The arguments to be parsed can also be specified manually:

from pargv import parse_args

args, kwargs = parse_args(argv=['pargv.py', '--name=pargv'])

Specification

parse_args parses arguments in the following way, assuming the following command line arguments (sys.argv): ['/pargv/pargv.py', 'command', 'positional', '--flag', '--optional=value', 'test', '--output-file', 'filename', '-ab', 'one', 'two']

By calling args, kwargs = parse_args(), this would return the following list and dict:

args = ['/pargv/pargv.py', 'command', 'positional']
kwargs = {
        'flag': True,
        'optional': ['value', 'test'],
        'output_file': 'filename',
        'a': True,
        'b': ['one', 'two'],
    }

Basic behaviour

• All arguments before the first option (starting with a hyphen) are considered positional arguments (args)
• All other arguments are considered optional keyword arguments (kwargs)
• Optional arguments without leading hyphens are considered as values to preceding keyword arguments
• One value of an option is stored as a string, multiple values are stored as a list
• Flags are stored with the value True in the dict
• Up to 2 leading hyphens are stripped from options, all other hyphens are converted into underscores (---test-this- would become the key _test_this_ in the dict)