Problem with reading in parameters with special characters in Python

The problem is in the commands you’re actually using, which are not the same as the commands you’ve shown us. Evidence: in Perl, the first two command-line arguments are $ARGV[0] and $ARGV[1] (the command name is $0). The Perl script you showed us wouldn’t produce the output you showed us.

“No match” is a shell error message.

Copy-and-paste (don’t re-type) the exact contents of your Python script, the exact command line you used to invoke it, and the exact output you got.

Some more things to watch out for:

You’re invoking the script as a.py, which implies either that you’re copying it to some directory in your $PATH, or that . is in your $PATH. If the latter, that’s a bad idea; consider what happens if you cd info a directory that contains a (possibly malicious) command called ls. Putting . at the end of your $PATH is safer than putting it at the beginning, but I still recommend leaving it out altogether and using ./command to invoke commands in the current directory. In any case, for purposes of this exercise, please use ./a.py rather than a.py, just so we can be sure you’re not picking up another a.py from elsewhere in your $PATH.

This is a long shot, but check whether you have any files in your current directory with a * character in their names. some_command asd*123 (without quotation marks) will fail if there are no matching files, but not if there happens to be a file whose name is literally "asd*123".

Another thing to try: change your Python script as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python

print "before import sys"

import sys

print "after import sys"

username = sys.argv[1]
password = sys.argv[2]

This will tell you whether the shell is invoking your script at all.