[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I'm trying to get this bit of code to work without triggering the > IndexError. > > import shutil, os, sys > > if sys.argv[1] != None: > ver = sys.argv[1] > else: > ver = '2.14'
Something like:: if len(sys.argv) > 1: ver = sys.argv[1] else: ver = '2.14' It looks like you're trying to do argument parsing, though and for anything more complicated than the above, you might prefer to use a real argument parsing library like argparse_:: import argparse parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='print the version') parser.add_argument('ver', nargs='?', default='2.14', help='the version number to print') args = parser.parse_args() print args.ver Then from the command line:: $ script.py 2.14 $ script.py 3.14159265359 3.14159265359 $ script.py -h usage: script.py [-h] [ver] print the version positional arguments: ver the version number to print optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit And then you can feel good about yourself for also documenting your command-line interface. ;-) .. _argparse: http://argparse.python-hosting.com/ STeVe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list