diff --git a/asmtransformers/scripts/tokenize_dataset.py b/asmtransformers/scripts/tokenize_dataset.py
index 53d652e..b07ff5b 100644
--- a/asmtransformers/scripts/tokenize_dataset.py
+++ b/asmtransformers/scripts/tokenize_dataset.py
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-import sys
+import argparse
 
 import datasets
 
@@ -17,19 +17,41 @@ def do_tokenize(function):
     return dataset.map(do_tokenize, **map_kwargs)
 
 
-if __name__ == '__main__':
-    # expect 3 arguments from cli
-    tokenizer, data_in, data_out = sys.argv[1:]
-
+def main(tokenizer, input_data, output_folder, split):
     tokenizer = ASMTokenizer.from_pretrained(tokenizer)
-    dataset = datasets.load_from_disk(data_in)
+    print('loading dataset')
+    dataset = datasets.load_from_disk(input_data)
+    if split:
+        dataset = dataset.train_test_split(test_size=split)
 
     # let the tokenizer preprocess data from data_in, write the result to data_out
-
+    print('tokenizing dataset')
     if isinstance(dataset, datasets.Dataset):  # datasets.load_from_disk either a Dataset or DatasetDict type
         dataset = tokenize(tokenizer, dataset)
     else:
         for subset in dataset:
             dataset[subset] = tokenize(tokenizer, dataset[subset])
 
-    dataset.save_to_disk(data_out)
+    dataset.save_to_disk(output_folder)
+
+
+def get_parser():
+    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
+
+    parser.add_argument('--tokenizer', type=str, required=True, help='folder with tokenizer')
+    parser.add_argument('--input-data', type=str, required=True, help='data to be used for training')
+    parser.add_argument('--output-folder', type=str, required=True, help='folder to leave the tokenized data')
+    parser.add_argument(
+        '--split',
+        type=float,
+        required=False,
+        help='split between train and test; define percentage of test data as number between 0 and 1',
+    )
+
+    return parser
+
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+    parser = get_parser()
+    args = parser.parse_args()
+    main(**vars(args))