Question

In Python, is there a way to specify an unlimited number of arguments to a command line option ? For example something like python myscript.py --use-files a b c d e. Note that I strictly want to use a command line option e.g. I don’t just want python myscript.py a b c d e

Answer 1

Command-line options are simple with stdlib argparse module. Using nargs="*" allows arbitrarily many arguments to be supplied for an option:

import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('--use-files', nargs='*', default=['a', 'b'])
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args)

Outputs:

$ python /tmp/spam.py 
Namespace(use_files=['a', 'b'])
$ python /tmp/spam.py --use-files hello world
Namespace(use_files=['hello', 'world'])
$ python /tmp/spam.py --use-files aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, aleph-null bottles of beer, take one down pass it around, aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall
Namespace(use_files=['aleph-null', 'bottles', 'of', 'beer', 'on', 'the', 'wall,', 'aleph-null', 'bottles', 'of', 'beer,', 'take', 'one', 'down', 'pass', 'it', 'around,', 'aleph-null', 'bottles', 'of', 'beer', 'on', 'the', 'wall'])