Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

Post History

66%
+2 −0
Q&A How can I access and use command-line arguments in Python?

In many other programming languages, the execution of code starts in a specifically named function (such as main) which is expected to have a specific signature, which allows that function to recei...

1 answer  ·  posted 19d ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 19d ago by Karl Knechtel‭

#1: Initial revision by user avatar Karl Knechtel‭ · 2024-06-15T09:19:16Z (19 days ago)
How can I access and use command-line arguments in Python?
In many other programming languages, the execution of code starts in a specifically named function (such as `main`) which is expected to have a specific signature, which allows that function to receive arguments from the command line.

For example, we may write `int main(int argc, char** argv)` in C or C++, or `public static void main(String[] args)` in Java, or `public static void Main(string[] args)` in C#.

But I know that [Python doesn't have anything like this, and code instead runs top to bottom](https://software.codidact.com/posts/291322).

So, how can I access the command-line arguments from a Python script? In particular, do I need to distinguish between cases where the code is run via the Python interpreter (a command like `python myfile.py`) or [directly](https://software.codidact.com/posts/291736)?