Command line arguments

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Python has a variety of command-line switches which can be passed to py. These can be found by performing py --help, which gives this output on Python 3.4:

Python Launcher

usage: py [ launcher-arguments ] [ python-arguments ] script [ script-arguments ]

Launcher arguments:

-2     : Launch the latest Python 2.x version
-3     : Launch the latest Python 3.x version
-X.Y   : Launch the specified Python version
-X.Y-32: Launch the specified 32bit Python version

The following help text is from Python:

usage: G:\Python34\python.exe [option] ... [-c cmd | -m mod | file | -] [arg] ...
Options and arguments (and corresponding environment variables):
-b     : issue warnings about str(bytes_instance), str(bytearray_instance)
         and comparing bytes/bytearray with str. (-bb: issue errors)
-B     : don't write .py[co] files on import; also PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=x
-c cmd : program passed in as string (terminates option list)
-d     : debug output from parser; also PYTHONDEBUG=x
-E     : ignore PYTHON* environment variables (such as PYTHONPATH)
-h     : print this help message and exit (also --help)
-i     : inspect interactively after running script; forces a prompt even
         if stdin does not appear to be a terminal; also PYTHONINSPECT=x
-I     : isolate Python from the user's environment (implies -E and -s)
-m mod : run library module as a script (terminates option list)
-O     : optimize generated bytecode slightly; also PYTHONOPTIMIZE=x
-OO    : remove doc-strings in addition to the -O optimizations
-q     : don't print version and copyright messages on interactive startup
-s     : don't add user site directory to sys.path; also PYTHONNOUSERSITE
-S     : don't imply 'import site' on initialization
-u     : unbuffered binary stdout and stderr, stdin always buffered;
         also PYTHONUNBUFFERED=x
         see man page for details on internal buffering relating to '-u'
-v     : verbose (trace import statements); also PYTHONVERBOSE=x
         can be supplied multiple times to increase verbosity
-V     : print the Python version number and exit (also --version)
-W arg : warning control; arg is action:message:category:module:lineno
         also PYTHONWARNINGS=arg
-x     : skip first line of source, allowing use of non-Unix forms of #!cmd
-X opt : set implementation-specific option
file   : program read from script file
-      : program read from stdin (default; interactive mode if a tty)
arg ...: arguments passed to program in sys.argv[1:]

Other environment variables:
PYTHONSTARTUP: file executed on interactive startup (no default)
PYTHONPATH   : ';'-separated list of directories prefixed to the
               default module search path.  The result is sys.path.
PYTHONHOME   : alternate <prefix> directory (or <prefix>;<exec_prefix>).
               The default module search path uses <prefix>\lib.
PYTHONCASEOK : ignore case in 'import' statements (Windows).
PYTHONIOENCODING: Encoding[:errors] used for stdin/stdout/stderr.
PYTHONFAULTHANDLER: dump the Python traceback on fatal errors.
PYTHONHASHSEED: if this variable is set to 'random', a random value is used
   to seed the hashes of str, bytes and datetime objects.  It can also be
   set to an integer in the range [0,4294967295] to get hash values with a
   predictable seed.

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The interpreter command line console:
* Command line arguments

Table Of Contents
2 Filter
3 List
7 Loops
22 Reduce
27 Classes
31 Set
42 Tuple
45 Enum
62 Sockets
82 The interpreter command line console
89 urllib
92 Idioms
104 Stack
105 Profiling
109 Logging
111 os module
118 Mixins
120 ArcPy
126 Arrays
132 2to3 tool
135 Unicode
138 Neo4j
140 Curses
141 Templates
145 heapq
146 tkinter
154 Audio
155 pyglet
157 ijson
160 Flask
161 Groupby
163 pygame
165 hashlib
166 Gzip
167 ctypes
185 pyaudio
186 shelve