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Runtime Environment

sys provides low-level APIs for interacting with the system outside of an application, by accepting command line arguments, accessing user input, and passing messages and status values to the user.

Command Line Arguments

The arguments captured by the interpreter are processed there and not passed along to the program directly. Any remaining options and arguments, including the name of the script itself, are saved to sys.argv in case the program does need to use them.

import sys

print 'Arguments:', sys.argv

In the third example below, the -u option is understood by the interpreter, and is not passed directly to the program being run.

$ python sys_argv.py

Arguments: ['sys_argv.py']

$ python sys_argv.py -v foo blah

Arguments: ['sys_argv.py', '-v', 'foo', 'blah']

$ python -u sys_argv.py

Arguments: ['sys_argv.py']

See also

getopt, optparse, argparse
Modules for parsing command line arguments.

Input and Output Steams

Following the Unix paradigm, Python programs can access three file descriptors by default.

import sys

print >>sys.stderr, 'STATUS: Reading from stdin'

data = sys.stdin.read()

print >>sys.stderr, 'STATUS: Writing data to stdout'

sys.stdout.write(data)
sys.stdout.flush()

print >>sys.stderr, 'STATUS: Done'

stdin is the standard way to read input, usually from a console but also from other programs via a pipeline. stdout is the standard way to write output for a user (to the console) or to be sent to the next program in a pipeline. stderr is intended for use with warning or error messages.

$ cat sys_stdio.py | python sys_stdio.py

STATUS: Reading from stdin
STATUS: Writing data to stdout
#!/usr/bin/env python
# encoding: utf-8
#
# Copyright (c) 2009 Doug Hellmann All rights reserved.
#
"""
"""
#end_pymotw_header

import sys

print >>sys.stderr, 'STATUS: Reading from stdin'

data = sys.stdin.read()

print >>sys.stderr, 'STATUS: Writing data to stdout'

sys.stdout.write(data)
sys.stdout.flush()

print >>sys.stderr, 'STATUS: Done'
STATUS: Done

See also

subprocess, pipes
Both subprocess and pipes have features for pipelining programs together.

Returning Status

To return an exit code from your program, pass an integer value to sys.exit().

import sys

exit_code = int(sys.argv[1])
sys.exit(exit_code)

A non-zero value means the program exited with an error.

$ python sys_exit.py 0 ; echo "Exited $?"

Exited 0

$ python sys_exit.py 1 ; echo "Exited $?"

Exited 1

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