Question

So I have some code that has way too many of these in it

try:
    if argv[4]:
        n = argv[4]
except IndexError, e:
    n = raw_input("Enter n: ")

Is there some easier way to do this?

Basically a better way to check for input to exists and then if it doesn’t act accordingly.

Thanks

Answer 1

Have a look at the argparse module (which does a lot more than is shown here):

import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Process some integers.')
parser.add_argument('integers', metavar='N', type=int, nargs='+',
                   help='an integer for the accumulator')
parser.add_argument('--sum', dest='accumulate', action='store_const',
                   const=sum, default=max,
                   help='sum the integers (default: find the max)')

args = parser.parse_args()
print args.accumulate(args.integers)