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Should I be using argparse in python for file manipulation? All the examples online are about simple manipulation of the command line arguments itself. More specifically, I have 3 specific file manipulation tasks, let's call them a,b and c. For example, running

python -i input.csv -a -b

should run tasks a and b on input.csv.

If argparse is indeed suitable, how exactly should I go about doing it? My current plan is to define a custom action for each task to make the code more extendable and reusable. Any suggestions?

user1943079
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1 Answers1

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Yes, you can perfectly use argparse with file names. For example: 

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument("-i", type=str, help="...")
parser.add_argument('-a', dest='task_a', action='store_true', help="...")
parser.add_argument('-b', dest='task_b', action='store_true', help="...")

parser.set_defaults(task_a=False)   
parser.set_defaults(task_b=False)

args = parser.parse_args()

file_name = args.i
# or file_name = os.path.expanduser(args.i)

if os.path.isfile(file_name):
    file = open(file_name, 'rb')
    # and now do whatever you need to do with the file
    if args.task_a:
        ...
    if args.task_b:
        ...

    file.close()
jpl
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