Can I access sys.argv in python in interactive mode?

Question

I'd like to do something like:

% python foo bar
import sys
sys.argv

to get:

%  ['foo', 'bar']

but of course python dies when you enter an argument which is not a script or goes into non interactive mode if you do.

Can I do this somehow?

Causative

Answer 1

Use - as script name:

python - foo bar

Test:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.argv
['-', 'foo', 'bar']

Arlenearles

Answer 2

$ python - asdf asdf
Python 2.7.6 (default, Feb 15 2014, 23:06:13) 
[GCC 4.8.2 20140206 (prerelease)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> sys.argv
['-', 'asdf', 'asdf']
>>> 

Huntlee

+1 thanks for answering - ndpu got in 20s earlier... ! – Causative

Answer 3

Run python this way:

python - foo bar

Then

import sys
sys.argv

will work :)

Bedlam

Answer 4

You could just set it manually for testing in IDLE:

try:
    __file__
except:
    sys.argv = [sys.argv[0], 'foo', 'bar']

Painful

i thought about that, but i'm really an occasional python programmer and i'd like to verify i'm using the array properly. i usually just write the print statement and run a script, but it would be nice to do this on the command line... – Causative

but running python foo bar won't run python – Bedlam