Was: Parameters of handleArgs

I went back to this conversation with Russell, and tried to use it in an other way. I have console encoding problems with this command with Cyrillic letters:
replace.py -catr:Венгрия . @ -lang:ru -excepttext:"[[hu:" -save:magyarok.txt -always
One way is to urlencode the Russian category. Other way is to insert it into a script. (DOS batch files won't work, I already tried.)
So what I did:
import replace
replace.main(u'-catr:Венгрия', '.', '@', '-lang:ru', '-excepttext:"[[hu:"', '-save:magyarok.txt')
This results in an error message:
File "C:\Pywikipedia\replace.py", line 582, in main
    for arg in pywikibot.handleArgs(*args):
File "C:\Pywikipedia\wikipedia.py", line 7795, in handleArgs
    arg = _decodeArg(arg)
File "C:\Pywikipedia\wikipedia.py", line 7767, in _decodeArg
    return unicode(arg, config.console_encoding)
TypeError: decoding Unicode is not supported
If I omit u from before -catr, no error is thrown, but the name is erroneously decoded.
Now comes the tick! I went to line 7795 of current wikipedia.py (r9894) as shown above, and commented it out. Now my script runs perfectly! I love it!

I don't want to spoil handleArgs() and I know this is an unusual use of it. But is it possible in some way to pass a parameter to it that tells _decodeArg to shut up? Or is there another correct way of passing Unicode parameters from within a script?

2011/5/18 Russell Blau <russblau@imapmail.org>

Bináris said:

> I see in a couple of bots this construction:
>
> def main(*args):
> for arg in pywikibot.handleArgs(*args):
> etc.
>
> Now, if I write instead of this
> def main():
> for arg in pywikibot.handleArgs():
> etc.
> the result seems to be just the same. I tried with valid global and with
> unique parameters as well.
> So, what is the difference?
> I know the theory that * means a variable width argument list, but if I
> omit it, the behaviour does > not change.

The behavior is the same if you run the script from the command line.

However, using (*args) also allows you the option of running the script from
inside the Python interactive interpreter; for example, if you were running
"replace.py Foo Bar -start:!", then you could "import replace" in the
interpreter and run <code>replace.main("Foo", "Bar", "-start:!")</code>.
This can be useful for debugging, among other things.

--
Bináris