Getting ready

The basic use of argparse in a script can be shown in three steps:

1. Define the arguments that your script is going to accept, generating a new parser.
2. Call the defined parser, returning an object with all the resulting arguments.
3. Use the arguments to call the entry point of your script, which will apply the defined behavior.

Try to use the following general structure for your scripts:

IMPORTS

def main(main parameters):
  DO THINGS

if __name__ == '__main__':
    DEFINE ARGUMENT PARSER
    PARSE ARGS
    VALIDATE OR MANIPULATE ARGS, IF NEEDED
    main(arguments)

The main function makes it easy to know what the entry point for the code is. The section under the if statement is only executed if the file is called directly, but not if it's imported. We'll follow this for all the steps.