Question

I would like to have the ability to pass an argument w/o having to specify an option for optparse. If I do pass an option, it has to be a known option or else the script will fail.

Rsync the following file to destination

myscript.py filename

Rsync the following folder to destination (all this is figured out in function I create).

myscript.py -f foldername

The reason is, I have an array (or dict) that ties with the “foldername.” If no options are passed, the argument given in the CLI is a file that’s in the working folder where the user calls the script. Passing -f means to upload a folder whose value is stored in a dict (user can be in any directory, this folder’s path is known ahead of time).

Am I better off adding options for both options? -f for file and -v for folder aka version?

Answer 1

I am always a fan of being explicit, but you can short circuit optparse.

# args[0] is always the executable's name
if len(args) > 1:
    parser.parse_args(args, options)
else:
    #open file