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Learn Enough Python to be Useful:

argparse
How to Get Command Line Arguments Into Your Scripts

Jeff Hale · Following

Published in Towards Data Science
6 min read · Feb 4, 2019

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If you plan to be a software developer with Python, you’ll want to be able to

use argparse for your scripting needs. If you’re a data scientist, you’ll likely
find yourself needing to port your code from a Jupyter Notebook to a
reproducible script. For many newer data scientists this can be a step from a
comfortable, happy place into scary land. This guide is designed to make the
leap less scary.

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7/1/23, 11:05 AM Learn Enough Python to be Useful: argparse | by Jeff Hale | Towards Data Science

Like a mountain through the clouds, argparse brings arguments from the command line. 😏

argparse is the “recommended command-line parsing module in the Python

standard library.” It’s what you use to get command line arguments into your
program.

I couldn’t find a good intro guide for argparse when I needed one, so I wrote
this article. Enjoy!

Jupyter is great

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7/1/23, 11:05 AM Learn Enough Python to be Useful: argparse | by Jeff Hale | Towards Data Science

Beyond the Jupyter Notebook

The first time I saw argparse in a Python script for a side project I thought,
“What is this voodo magic?” And quickly moved the code into a Jupyter
Notebook. This move turned out to be suboptimal. 😦

I wanted to be able to run a script rather than have to step through a Jupyter
Notebook. A script with argparse would have been much simpler to use and
much less work. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry and didn’t find the docs easy
to grasp.

Since then, I’ve come to understand and enjoy argparse . It’s indispensable.

Here’s what you need to know.

Why Use argparse?

argparse — parse the arguments.

Using argparse is how you let the user of your program provide values for
variables at runtime. It’s a means of communication between the writer of a
program and the user. That user might be your future self. 😃

Using argparse means the doesn’t need to go into the code and make
changes to the script. Giving the user the ability to enter command line
arguments provides flexibility.

Python is great, too!

Example
Say you have a directory with videos in it and want to turn those videos into
images using the OpenCV library. You could use argparse so the user can
enter input and output directories. Here’s what the argparse section of your
videos.py file looks like:
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7/1/23, 11:05 AM Learn Enough Python to be Useful: argparse | by Jeff Hale | Towards Data Science

# videos.py
import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Videos to
images')
parser.add_argument('indir', type=str, help='Input dir for
videos')
parser.add_argument('outdir', type=str, help='Output dir for
image')
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args.indir)

This file imports the argparse library. Then it makes a parser object with a
description. Then the variable indir is created using parser.add_argument() .

The type of the variable is set to string and a help message is provided. Then
the same is done for outdir. Next the args variable is set to the values of the
parsed arguments.

Now the following command can be run from the command line:

python videos.py /videos /images

Note that quotes do not need to be placed around the values /videos and
/images when you pass them.

"/videos" becomes the value for args.indir and "/images" becomes the
value for args.outdir .

The output printed to the terminal is /videos .

We just showed that you can use the args.indir variable anywhere in your
program. How cool is that?

You’ve now seen the magic of argparse!

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7/1/23, 11:05 AM Learn Enough Python to be Useful: argparse | by Jeff Hale | Towards Data Science

How do they do that?

What Else Should You Know About argparse?

Positional Arguments
parser.add_argument('indir', type=str, help='Input dir for videos')

created a positional argument. For positional arguments to a Python

function, the order matters. The first value passed from the command line
becomes the first positional argument. The second value passed becomes
the second positional argument.

What happens if you exclude these positional arguments and try to run
python videos.py ?

You’ll get an error: videos.py: error: the following arguments are required:

indir, outdir . Positional arguments are always required to be passed in the

command to run the script.
Optional Arguments
What happens if you run python videos.py --help ?

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7/1/23, 11:05 AM Learn Enough Python to be Useful: argparse | by Jeff Hale | Towards Data Science

You get the helpful information we put into our script to tell you what you
need to do.

Output of python videos.py --help

Excellent! help is an example of an optional argument. Note that --help is

the only optional argument you get for free, but you can make more.

Optional arguments are created just like positional arguments except that
they have a '--' double dash at the start of their name (or a '-' single dash
and one additional character for the short version). For example, you can
create an optional argument with parser.add_argument('-m', '--

my_optional') .

The following larger example shows how to create and reference an optional
argument. Note that we specify the type int for an integer in this example.
You could also specify other valid Python variable types.

# my_example.py
import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='My example
explanation')

parser.add_argument(
'--my_optional',
default=2,
help='provide an integer (default: 2)'
)
my_namespace = parser.parse_args()
print(my_namespace.my_optional)

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7/1/23, 11:05 AM Learn Enough Python to be Useful: argparse | by Jeff Hale | Towards Data Science

Note that the argument specified with '--my_optional' becomes this

namespaced variable without the dashes: 'my_namespace.my_optional' .

Also note that the optional argument can have a default value. Here we
specify a default of 2. Running python my_example.py outputs 2.

The optional argument value can be set at run time from the command line
like this: python my_example.py--my_optional=3 . The program then outputs 3.

Integers

You can do even more with argparse . For example, you can have arguments
gathered into lists with nargs='*’ . You can also check for ranges of values
with choices . See the argparse docs for all you can do.

When Else Might I Use argparse?

You can also use argparse with programs running in Docker containers. If
you want to pass command line arguments to your scripts when building
your image you can do so with RUN. If you want to pass arguments to your

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7/1/23, 11:05 AM Learn Enough Python to be Useful: argparse | by Jeff Hale | Towards Data Science

script at run time you can do so with CMD or ENTRYPOINT. Learn more
about Dockerfiles in my series on Docker:

Learn Enough Docker to be Useful

Part 3: A Dozen Dandy Dockerfile Instructions
towardsdatascience.com

Wrap
Now you’ve seen the basics of argparse . You’ve seen how to get positional
and optional arguments into your programs from the command line. You’ve
also seen how to set default optional arguments. If you want to go deeper,
check out the official docs.

Update Mar. 6, 2019 I should mention that there are a number of packages
available to add command line arguments to your program. Readers have
suggested several in the comments, the most popular of which I’ve linked to
here:

click

fire

docopt

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7/1/23, 11:05 AM Learn Enough Python to be Useful: argparse | by Jeff Hale | Towards Data Science

More mountains through the mist

Here are a few more suggestions to help you step out of the Jupyter
Notebook.

Environment variables are useful variables that get set outside a program.
Here’s a nice, clear intro. This article from DataCamp blog focuses on the
PATH variable.

You can convert repos with Jupyter notebooks into Docker Images with
Repo2Docker. Will Koehrsen wrote a good guide on the tool here.

I plan to write more articles about interacting with the file system and
scripting. Follow me to make sure you don’t miss them! 😃

I hope you found this intro useful. If you did, share it on your favorite
forums and social media. Data scientists and programmers who don’t know
argparse will thank you!

I write about data science, cloud computing, and other tech stuff. Follow me
and read more here.
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7/1/23, 11:05 AM Learn Enough Python to be Useful: argparse | by Jeff Hale | Towards Data Science

Thanks for reading!👏

Python Data Science Programming Software Development

Towards Data Science

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Written by Jeff Hale

18.1K Followers · Writer for Towards Data Science

I write about data science. Join my Data Awesome mailing list to stay on top of the latest data tools
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