CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonsubprocessdirectory
james_dean
james_dean

Reputation: 1517

Handling directories with spaces Python subprocess.call()

I'm trying to create a program that scans a text file and passes arguments to subprocess. Everything works fine until I get directories with spaces in the path.

My split method, which breaks down the arguments trips up over the spaces:

s = "svn move folder/hello\ world anotherfolder/hello\ world"

task = s.split(" ")
process = subprocess.check_call(task, shell = False)

Do, either I need function to parse the correct arguments, or I pass the whole string to the subprocess without breaking it down first.

I'm a little lost though.

Upvotes: 16

Views: 12955

Answers (2)

Webtest
Webtest

Reputation: 21

This helped me very much trying to get very complex file specs, from a catalog of music in an irregular folder structure, into ffplay. I never did get it to work with a string variable in os.system() call nor in subprocess.call(). It only worked putting the string directly into the call.

subprocess.call( "ffplay", "-nodisp", "-autoexit", 'complex path string' )

I finally found the list method suggested by jfs (THANK YOU!). It enables using a variable for the filespec. The key was to put the variable into a list without any quotes embedded in the string. The list furnishes the required quotes and works GREAT! Here is the "list" solution:

songspec = "a complex /media/mint filespec without embedded quotes!"
playsong = ["ffplay", "-nodisp", "-autoexit", songspec]
subprocess.call(playsong)

This works PERFECTLY and I can automatically step through my list of songs with no problem. It took me about 3 hours to get this one operation functioning.

Upvotes: 0

jfs
jfs

Reputation: 414207

Use a list instead:

task = ["svn",  "move",  "folder/hello world", "anotherfolder/hello world"]
subprocess.check_call(task)

If your file contains whole commands, not just paths then you could try shlex.split():

task = shlex.split(s)
subprocess.check_call(task)

Upvotes: 24

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