Automatically Type Cast Parameters In Python

Question

Background:
I mostly run python scripts from the command line in pipelines and so my arguments are always strings that need to be type casted to the app

Answer 1

If you want to auto-convert values:

def boolify(s):
    if s == 'True':
        return True
    if s == 'False':
        return False
    raise ValueError("huh?")

def autoconvert(s):
    for fn in (boolify, int, float):
        try:
            return fn(s)
        except ValueError:
            pass
    return s

You can adjust boolify to accept other boolean values if you like.