Question

using module sys one can get command line arguments like this

import sys
for x in sys.argv:
    print x

then at command shell[ubunto]

>>python file.py 1, 2, 3

this will print
file[filename]
1
2
3
Now comes my doubt
in python documentaion 3.0.1 it is mentioned that

If no script name was passed to the Python interpreter, argv[0] is the empty string.

>>python  1, 2, 3

if i pass no script name , it will lead to error that ‘can’t open a file’. How would argv[0] be intitialized to an empty string when you are not passing script name ?

Answer 1

In the shell, you can do something like python -c "print 'Hello World!'", or you can put source code into python through a pipe. In such cases, no filename is available for python. In all other cases, Python will have a filename. Even if you use a shebang-line:

#! /usr/bin/python

and then call

./file.py 1, 2, 3

the shell will translate it to the correct interpreter call

python file.py 1, 2, 3