[SOLVED] How to decide what to do with command line parameters?

As a few others mentioned, the argparse module from the stdlib is the way to go for Python. It takes care of most of this for you in an optimized way. Here's a minimal example of the above:

#!/bin/env python3

import argparse


# Setup main parser
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
    prog="app",
    description="App that manages things and jobs",
)
parser.add_argument(
    "-v",
    "--verbose",
    action="store_true",
)
subparsers = parser.add_subparser(
    help="Sub commands",
    dest="command",
)

# Setup sub-parsers
thing_parser = subparsers.add_parser(
    "thing",
    help="Manage things",
)
# thing_parser args
thing_parser.add_argument(
    "--dry_run",
    action="store_true",
    help="dry run",
)
thing_parser.add_argument(
    "--create",
    action="store_true",
    help="Create thing",
)
thing_parser.add_argument(
    "--name",
    action="store",
    type=str,
    required=True,
    nargs="+",
    help="Thing name",
)

job_parser = subparsers.add_parser(
    "job",
    help="Manage jobs",
)
job_parser.add_argument(
    "--cancel",
    "-c",
    action="store_true",
    help="Cancel job",
)
job_parser.add_argument(
    "--index",
    "-i",
    action="store",
    type=int,
    required=True,
    nargs="+",
    help="Job index",
)


def main():
    args=parser.parse_args()
    if args.verbose:
        print("Verbose mode")
    # Match-Case statement for cleaner logic
    match args.command:
        case "thing":
            # thing logic and function calls here
        case "job":
            # job logic and function calls here
        case _:
            parser.print_usage()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

It's never pointless. Command-line arguments are often tricky to get right, especially when your program can do a lot of different things.

Python has a builtin argparse module. You should use that. It does all of the heavy lifting and logic for you.

What module are you currently using? I think the built-in module argparse should solve your problem but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're asking for.

Others have already mentioned argparse, which is a pretty great module for argument parsing if you want to use something built-in. If you're willing to look into other libraries though, I'd recommend taking a look at Click. You should be able to pip install click to use it. It takes advantage of defining the CLI through decorators, and from my experience, works better when you want to have subcommands.

Seems like a for statement and a case statement could work.

Detect numargs

For a = 0 to numargs

Get core command on arg a (probably read until you hit an equals sign or a space), trim and lcase

Select Case core command

Case "thing"

Do stuff

Case "--name" Get part after equals and do stuff

Case "-i" Get next arg and increment a

End select