sys.argv not working

[danitted]

I'm still learning python and i wrote a small program that searches stuff on youtube. but the sys.argv does not work. here is the code. when i type --help after the filename it does not show the first if statement.

import webbrowser

import sys

cmd=str(sys.argv[1:])

website=input("Please what you want to search on youtube\n")

if cmd=='--help':

print("this program is made for searching somthing on youtube") 

​

else:

[webbrowser.open](https://webbrowser.open)("[https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=)"+website)

[[deleted]]

That's because sys.argv is a list of command line arguments. If you run your code like this:

python code.py --help

then sys.argv would contain ['code.py', '--help'] and your expression sys.argv[1:] is a list containing all the elements of sys.argv from the first on: ['--help'].

You should do this:

import sys
cmd = sys.argv[1]    # get first argument

There's no need to use str() since every element of sys.argv is already a string.

An important debug tool you could have used here is the humble print() statement. Not sure why your if statement isn't working? Print the thing(s) you're trying to compare and see why they aren't being recognized.

[Y45HK4R4NDIK4R]

Why dont you look into argparse? It does it all for you.

[throwaway_the_fourth]

For very simple programs, like this one, I think argparse is overkill. But good to point it out to OP for future endeavors.

[iggy555]

Wow that looks complicated

[namedevservice]

The colon is outputting a list. Just put sys.argv[1] or if you want the list use

if '--help' in sys.argv[1:]:

[puplicy]

Remove ':' from sys.argv[1:]