I would like to use a variable number of arguments in a task for pyinvoke. Like so:
from invoke import task
@task(help={'out_file:': 'Name of the output file.',
'in_files': 'List of the input files.'})
def pdf_combine(out_file, *in_files):
print( "out = %s" % out_file)
print( "in = %s" % list(in_files))
The above is only one of many variations I tried out but it seems pyinvoke can't handle a variable number of arguments. Is this true?
The above code results in
$ invoke pdf_combine -o binder.pdf -i test.pdf test1.pdf
No idea what '-i' is!
Similar, if I define pdf_combine(out_file, in_file), without the asterisk before in_file
$ invoke pdf_combine -o binder.pdf -i test.pdf test1.pdf
No idea what 'test1.pdf' is!
If I invoke the task with only one in_file like below it run OK.
$ invoke pdf_combine -o binder.pdf -i test.pdf
out = binder.pdf
in = ['t', 'e', 's', 't', '.', 'p', 'd', 'f']
What I would like to see is
$ invoke pdf_combine -o binder.pdf test.pdf test1.pdf test2.pdf
out = binder.pdf
in = [test.pdf test1.pdf test2.pdf]
I could not find anything like that in the documentation of pyinvoke, though I cannot imagine that other users of this library do not have the need for calling a task with a variable number of arguments...
You can do something like this:
from invoke import task
@task
def pdf_combine(out_file, in_files):
print( "out = %s" % out_file)
print( "in = %s" % in_files)
in_file_list = in_files.split(',') # insert as many args as you want separated by comma
>> out = binder.pdf
>> in = test.pdf,test1.pdf,test2.pdf
Where the invoke command is:
invoke pdf_combine -o binder.pdf -i test.pdf,test1.pdf,test2.pdf
I couldn't find another way to do this reading the pyinvoke documentation.