Question

Beginner with python here. I’ve been doing some online tutorials and can’t seem to find the solution to this question. What I’d like to do is this:

hostname = raw_input("Type host name here: ")

Then the user inputs as many host names as they like, type done, then what they entered becomes variables for use in the script. So if they typed HOST1, HOST2, HOST3, done then the script would run commands for each entry. Example:

def myhostsbecomevariables(*args):
      arg1, arg2, arg3, etc etc etc = args
      print "arg1: %r, arg2: %r, etc: %r, etc: %r" % (arg1, arg2, etc etc)

myhostsbecomevariables(HOST1, HOST2, HOST3)

If the user types in 3 host names then myhostbecomesvariables uses 3 arguments. If they had typed 5 host names then it would have 5 arguments.

Answer 1

raw_input returns a single string. You can split that string on a delimiter if you wish:

hosts = raw_input("enter hosts (separated by a comma):").split(',')

Or split onto 2 lines:

host_string = raw_input("enter hosts (separated by a comma):")
hosts = hosts_string.split(',')

And you could pass this to myhostbecomevariables using argument unpacking:

myhostbecomevariables(*hosts)

where your function could be defined like this:

def myhostbecomevariables(*hosts):
    for host in hosts:
        print(host)

There really is no need to unpack the hosts into constituent parts here — Since (I assume) you’ll be performing the same action for each host, just do it in a loop.