Running another program using Python

Question

I have a program that processes files and returns another file as output. When I am running it in cmd I first set the path: "cd c:\program" and then set it to process the file located in the program folder: "program test.txt". I would like a python program to do it for me using the subprocess module, but I can't get it to work.

I have read the related posts and I know it should be a no-brainer, but as a novice I haven't been able to figure it out. Help greatly appriciated.

Here is one example of the code I tried. It runs, but doesn't produce any results.

import subprocess

textfile = 'c:\program\test.txt'
programPath = r'C:\program\program.exe'
subprocess.Popen([programPath, textfile])

Please show what you've tried and what went wrong: program + error message. — Fred Foo
– Fred Foo, Commented Mar 7, 2012 at 12:47
What do you mean by "It runs, but doesn't produce any results"? How can you tell it's running? How do you expect results to be produced? — Magnus Hoff
– Magnus Hoff, Commented Mar 7, 2012 at 13:23
What I meant is that it does not produce an error. Also it does not produce the desired results. — root
– root, Commented Mar 7, 2012 at 13:25
Maybe Popen is not what you want. You might want to try subprocess.check_call. — Magnus Hoff
– Magnus Hoff, Commented Mar 7, 2012 at 13:29

Fred Foo · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-07 13:30:23Z

3

You forgot to prepend r to textfile's literal:

textfile = r'c:\program\test.txt'

(\t is a tab character. Next time, please include any error messages in the post as well.)

edited Mar 7, 2012 at 13:30

answered Mar 7, 2012 at 13:23

Fred Foo

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3 Comments

David Robinson Over a year ago

Unless I'm mistaken, there wouldn't typically be any error message from this issue. But prepending r is right

Fred Foo Over a year ago

@DavidRobinson: program.exe would (hopefully) give an error message.

root Over a year ago

Thank you. Embarrasingly it solves the problem. (the mistake didn't produce an error though - thats why I thought I was more conceptually wrong here.

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