Question

Greetings,

A script is working on one or more files. I want to pass the filenames (with regex in them) as arguments and put them in a list. What is the best way to do it?

For example I would accept the following arguments:

script.py file[1-3].nc #would create list [file1.nc, file2.nc, file3.nc] that I can work on
script.py file*.nc #would scan the folder for matching patterns and create a list
script.py file1.nc file15.nc booba[1-2].nc #creates [file1.nc, file15.nc, booba1.nc, booba2.nc]

Answer 1

The glob module is exactly what you are looking for

Check the examples:

>>> import glob
>>> glob.glob('./[0-9].*')
['./1.gif', './2.txt']
>>> glob.glob('*.gif')
['1.gif', 'card.gif']
>>> glob.glob('?.gif')
['1.gif']

You can use optparse or just sys.argv to get arguments. And pass them to glob.