[python] How can I pass a list as a command-line argument with argparse?

I am trying to pass a list as an argument to a command line program. Is there an argparse option to pass a list as option?

parser.add_argument('-l', '--list',
                      type=list, action='store',
                      dest='list',
                      help='<Required> Set flag',
                      required=True)

Script is called like below

python test.py -l "265340 268738 270774 270817"

You can parse the list as a string and use of the eval builtin function to read it as a list. In this case, you will have to put single quotes into double quote (or the way around) in order to ensure successful string parse.

# declare the list arg as a string
parser.add_argument('-l', '--list', type=str)

# parse
args = parser.parse()

# turn the 'list' string argument into a list object
args.list = eval(args.list)
print(list)
print(type(list))

Testing:

python list_arg.py --list "[1, 2, 3]"

[1, 2, 3]
<class 'list'>

In add_argument(), type is just a callable object that receives string and returns option value.

import ast

def arg_as_list(s):                                                            
    v = ast.literal_eval(s)                                                    
    if type(v) is not list:                                                    
        raise argparse.ArgumentTypeError("Argument \"%s\" is not a list" % (s))
    return v                                                                   


def foo():
    parser.add_argument("--list", type=arg_as_list, default=[],
                        help="List of values")

This will allow to:

$ ./tool --list "[1,2,3,4]"

I prefer passing a delimited string which I parse later in the script. The reasons for this are; the list can be of any type int or str, and sometimes using nargs I run into problems if there are multiple optional arguments and positional arguments.

parser = ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('-l', '--list', help='delimited list input', type=str)
args = parser.parse_args()
my_list = [int(item) for item in args.list.split(',')]

Then,

python test.py -l "265340,268738,270774,270817" [other arguments]

or,

python test.py -l 265340,268738,270774,270817 [other arguments]

will work fine. The delimiter can be a space, too, which would though enforce quotes around the argument value like in the example in the question.

Or you can use a lambda type as suggested in the comments by Chepner:

parser.add_argument('-l', '--list', help='delimited list input', 
    type=lambda s: [int(item) for item in s.split(',')])

Additionally to nargs, you might want to use choices if you know the list in advance:

>>> parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='game.py')
>>> parser.add_argument('move', choices=['rock', 'paper', 'scissors'])
>>> parser.parse_args(['rock'])
Namespace(move='rock')
>>> parser.parse_args(['fire'])
usage: game.py [-h] {rock,paper,scissors}
game.py: error: argument move: invalid choice: 'fire' (choose from 'rock',
'paper', 'scissors')

Using nargs parameter in argparse's add_argument method

I use nargs='*' as an add_argument parameter. I specifically used nargs='*' to the option to pick defaults if I am not passing any explicit arguments

Including a code snippet as example:

Example: temp_args1.py

Please Note: The below sample code is written in python3. By changing the print statement format, can run in python2

#!/usr/local/bin/python3.6

from argparse import ArgumentParser

description = 'testing for passing multiple arguments and to get list of args'
parser = ArgumentParser(description=description)
parser.add_argument('-i', '--item', action='store', dest='alist',
                    type=str, nargs='*', default=['item1', 'item2', 'item3'],
                    help="Examples: -i item1 item2, -i item3")
opts = parser.parse_args()

print("List of items: {}".format(opts.alist))

Note: I am collecting multiple string arguments that gets stored in the list - opts.alist If you want list of integers, change the type parameter on parser.add_argument to int

Execution Result:

python3.6 temp_agrs1.py -i item5 item6 item7
List of items: ['item5', 'item6', 'item7']

python3.6 temp_agrs1.py -i item10
List of items: ['item10']

python3.6 temp_agrs1.py
List of items: ['item1', 'item2', 'item3']

I think the most elegant solution is to pass a lambda function to "type", as mentioned by Chepner. In addition to this, if you do not know beforehand what the delimiter of your list will be, you can also pass multiple delimiters to re.split:

# python3 test.py -l "abc xyz, 123"

import re
import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Process a list.')
parser.add_argument('-l', '--list',
                    type=lambda s: re.split(' |, ', s),
                    required=True,
                    help='comma or space delimited list of characters')

args = parser.parse_args()
print(args.list)


# Output: ['abc', 'xyz', '123']

If you are intending to make a single switch take multiple parameters, then you use nargs='+'. If your example '-l' is actually taking integers:

a = argparse.ArgumentParser()
a.add_argument(
    '-l', '--list',  # either of this switches
    nargs='+',       # one or more parameters to this switch
    type=int,        # /parameters/ are ints
    dest='list',     # store in 'list'.
    default=[],      # since we're not specifying required.
)

print a.parse_args("-l 123 234 345 456".split(' '))
print a.parse_args("-l 123 -l=234 -l345 --list 456".split(' '))

Produces

Namespace(list=[123, 234, 345, 456])
Namespace(list=[456])  # Attention!

If you specify the same argument multiple times, the default action ('store') replaces the existing data.

The alternative is to use the append action:

a = argparse.ArgumentParser()
a.add_argument(
    '-l', '--list',  # either of this switches
    type=int,        # /parameters/ are ints
    dest='list',     # store in 'list'.
    default=[],      # since we're not specifying required.
    action='append', # add to the list instead of replacing it
)

print a.parse_args("-l 123 -l=234 -l345 --list 456".split(' '))

Which produces

Namespace(list=[123, 234, 345, 456])

Or you can write a custom handler/action to parse comma-separated values so that you could do

-l 123,234,345 -l 456

If you have a nested list where the inner lists have different types and lengths and you would like to preserve the type, e.g.,

[[1, 2], ["foo", "bar"], [3.14, "baz", 20]]

then you can use the solution proposed by @sam-mason to this question, shown below:

from argparse import ArgumentParser
import json

parser = ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('-l', type=json.loads)
parser.parse_args(['-l', '[[1,2],["foo","bar"],[3.14,"baz",20]]'])

which gives:

Namespace(l=[[1, 2], ['foo', 'bar'], [3.14, 'baz', 20]])

I want to handle passing multiple lists, integer values and strings.

Helpful link => How to pass a Bash variable to Python?

def main(args):
    my_args = []
    for arg in args:
        if arg.startswith("[") and arg.endswith("]"):
            arg = arg.replace("[", "").replace("]", "")
            my_args.append(arg.split(","))
        else:
            my_args.append(arg)

    print(my_args)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    import sys
    main(sys.argv[1:])

Order is not important. If you want to pass a list just do as in between "[" and "] and seperate them using a comma.

Then,

python test.py my_string 3 "[1,2]" "[3,4,5]"

Output => ['my_string', '3', ['1', '2'], ['3', '4', '5']], my_args variable contains the arguments in order.