getopts behaving strangely in python

Question

I am using getops for args management and for some reason my -s variable is not working. My code is below, as well as the output I am getting

try:
  opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "hadsp:v", ["help", "all", "display", "single=", "present="])#, "search="])
except getopt.GetoptError as err:
  print(err)
  print "Exiting now, no options entered"
  help()
  sys.exit(2)

if len(opts) == 0:
  print "No options passed"
  help()

print opts
print args

for o, a in opts:
  if o in ("-h", "--help"):
    help()
  elif o in ("-p", "--present"):
    search(a)
  elif o in ("-a", "--all"):
    all_install()
  elif o in ("-s", "--single"):
    if a == '':
      print "crap"
      sys.exit(2)
    single_install(a)
  elif o in ("-d", "--display"):
    display()
  else:
    print "Exiting now, unknown option"
    help()
    sys.exit(2)

And the output is

[('-s', '')]
['test']
crap

when I run the program:

python file.py -s test

Not sure why this is happening, thanks for any help

There's some cruft at the end of line 2, including an extra paren and square bracket. Strange the interpreter doesn't complain. — Juan Tomas, Jul 18 '16 at 15:32
I think you want to use the argument `hads:p:v` instead of `hadsp:v`. The colon after the `s` specifies that this switch takes an argument. — Juan Tomas, Jul 18 '16 at 15:34
@JuanTomas, there's a `#` on line 2. The stuff at the end is comment — Holloway, Jul 19 '16 at 09:05

be_good_do_good · Answer 1 · 2016-07-18T15:39:54.900

import argparse

argParser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
argParser.add_argument(
        '-p', '--present', dest='present', help='write help here for this parameter')

args = argParser.parse_args()

if args.present:
    search(a)

Sample code to use argparse, which is easier to manage and use -h (or) --help is inbuilt option for argparse

If you would like to use getopt, please refer to documentation for parsing the options

https://docs.python.org/2/library/getopt.html

>>> import getopt
>>> args = '-a -b -cfoo -d bar a1 a2'.split()
>>> args
['-a', '-b', '-cfoo', '-d', 'bar', 'a1', 'a2']
>>> optlist, args = getopt.getopt(args, 'abc:d:')
>>> optlist
[('-a', ''), ('-b', ''), ('-c', 'foo'), ('-d', 'bar')]
>>> args
['a1', 'a2']

getopts behaving strangely in python

1 Answers1