Read Unicode characters from command-line arguments in Python 2.x on Windows

Here is a solution that is just what I’m looking for, making a call to the Windows GetCommandLineArgvW function:
Get sys.argv with Unicode characters under Windows (from ActiveState)

But I’ve made several changes, to simplify its usage and better handle certain uses. Here is what I use:

win32_unicode_argv.py

"""
win32_unicode_argv.py

Importing this will replace sys.argv with a full Unicode form.
Windows only.

From this site, with adaptations:
      http://code.activestate.com/recipes/572200/

Usage: simply import this module into a script. sys.argv is changed to
be a list of Unicode strings.
"""


import sys

def win32_unicode_argv():
    """Uses shell32.GetCommandLineArgvW to get sys.argv as a list of Unicode
    strings.

    Versions 2.x of Python don't support Unicode in sys.argv on
    Windows, with the underlying Windows API instead replacing multi-byte
    characters with '?'.
    """

    from ctypes import POINTER, byref, cdll, c_int, windll
    from ctypes.wintypes import LPCWSTR, LPWSTR

    GetCommandLineW = cdll.kernel32.GetCommandLineW
    GetCommandLineW.argtypes = []
    GetCommandLineW.restype = LPCWSTR

    CommandLineToArgvW = windll.shell32.CommandLineToArgvW
    CommandLineToArgvW.argtypes = [LPCWSTR, POINTER(c_int)]
    CommandLineToArgvW.restype = POINTER(LPWSTR)

    cmd = GetCommandLineW()
    argc = c_int(0)
    argv = CommandLineToArgvW(cmd, byref(argc))
    if argc.value > 0:
        # Remove Python executable and commands if present
        start = argc.value - len(sys.argv)
        return [argv[i] for i in
                xrange(start, argc.value)]

sys.argv = win32_unicode_argv()

Now, the way I use it is simply to do:

import sys
import win32_unicode_argv

and from then on, sys.argv is a list of Unicode strings. The Python optparse module seems happy to parse it, which is great.