I'm writing a python program where I need to read various optional command-line arguments, and one REQUIRED argument (a string) that ideally would be the last argument on the command-line. When using getopt, I can read-in everything except this string unless I set it up to also require the use of a flag (let's say -s) preceding it, like this:
Usage: myProgram.py [options] -s "some string"
Options available:
-x # Turn on option X
-y # Turn on option Y
-a "used-defined parameter 1"
-b "used-defined parameter 2"
-c "used-defined parameter 3"
-d "used-defined parameter 4"
-s "used-defined string" (REQUIRED)
where the code to process the arguments would be as follows:
(opts, args) = getopt.getopt(argv[1:], 'xya:b:c:d:s:')
This will parse the arguments into the key-value pairs of the allowed command-line options.
Instead, I'd like to allow the user to enter it like this:
Usage: myProgram.py [options] "some string"
without the -s identifier. As it's written above, if the -s is not explicitly included, the getopt code won't capture that last string. I can't simply assume mystring = sys.argv[-1] because it could be a parameter for one of the other optional arguments. How should I modify the getopt line (or what extra step should I add) to capture that last string when there is no key to identify it, while not confusing it with another existing key?
The solution (as suggested by @tripleee) was to add a couple of additional lines to capture the remaining command-line arguments and assign them to the variable I needed to use in the code. Specifically:
(opts, args) = getopt.getopt(argv[1:], 'xya:b:c:d:')
if args != "":
if len(args) == 1:
myString = args[0]
else:
myString = " ".join(args)