Read and compare argument with argv - Python

I want to pass an argument and from it make a condition, follow the example below:

import argparse

# construct the argument parse and parse the arguments
ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
ap.add_argument("--database", required=True, help="path to the 
database images")
args = vars(ap.parse_args())

if  (args == "mnist"):

    print('Hello!')

And then in the terminal I enter with:

python argv.py --database mnist

But my code simply does nothing. What am I doing wrong? How could I do this correctly?

Solution 1:

Calling vars on the Argparse NameSpace gives you a dict. You should compare the database argument now parsed as Key 'database' in the dict returned by vars:

if args['database'] == "mnist":
    print('Hello!')