def get_user_labels(labels, mlab):
    """returns data based on standard argument parsing

    Parameters
    ----------
    labels: list
        labels returned by read_all_data
    mlab: list
        manual labels for data
    Returns
    -------
    labels: list
        list of labels for each y_val
    """
    if mlab is not None:
        for i, l in enumerate(mlab):
            try:
                labels[i] = l
            except Exception:
                labels.append(l)
    return labels
