Python – Subprocess – How to call a Piped command in Windows

echopipepopenpythonsubprocess

How do I run this command with subprocess?

I tried:

proc = subprocess.Popen(
    '''ECHO bosco|"C:\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG\gpg.exe" --batch --passphrase-fd 0 --output "c:\docume~1\usi\locals~1\temp\tmptlbxka.txt" --decrypt "test.txt.gpg"''',
    stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
    stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
   stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
)
stdout_value, stderr_value = proc.communicate()

but got:

Traceback (most recent call last):
...
  File "C:\Python24\lib\subprocess.py", line 542, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\subprocess.py", line 706, in _execute_child
    startupinfo)
WindowsError: [Errno 2] The system cannot find the file specified

Things I've noticed:

Running the command on the windows
console works fine.
If I remove the
ECHO bosco| part, it runs fine the
the popen call above. So I think
this problem is related to echo or
|.

Best Solution

First and foremost, you don't actually need a pipe; you are just sending input. You can use subprocess.communicate for that.

Secondly, don't specify the command as a string; that's messy as soon as filenames with spaces are involved.

Thirdly, if you really wanted to execute a piped command, just call the shell. On Windows, I believe it's cmd /c program name arguments | further stuff.

Finally, single back slashes can be dangerous: "\p" is '\\p', but '\n' is a new line. Use os.path.join() or os.sep or, if specified outside python, just a forward slash.

proc = subprocess.Popen(
    ['C:/Program Files/GNU/GnuPG/gpg.exe',
    '--batch', '--passphrase-fd', '0',
    '--output ', 'c:/docume~1/usi/locals~1/temp/tmptlbxka.txt',
    '--decrypt', 'test.txt.gpg',],
    stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
    stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
   stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
)
stdout_value, stderr_value = proc.communicate('bosco')

Related Solutions

Python – How to execute a program or call a system command

Use the subprocess module in the standard library:

import subprocess
subprocess.run(["ls", "-l"])

The advantage of subprocess.run over os.system is that it is more flexible (you can get the stdout, stderr, the "real" status code, better error handling, etc...).

Even the documentation for os.system recommends using subprocess instead:

The subprocess module provides more powerful facilities for spawning new processes and retrieving their results; using that module is preferable to using this function. See the Replacing Older Functions with the subprocess Module section in the subprocess documentation for some helpful recipes.

On Python 3.4 and earlier, use subprocess.call instead of .run:

subprocess.call(["ls", "-l"])

Python – How to get the current time in Python

Use:

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.now()
datetime.datetime(2009, 1, 6, 15, 8, 24, 78915)

>>> print(datetime.datetime.now())
2009-01-06 15:08:24.789150

And just the time:

>>> datetime.datetime.now().time()
datetime.time(15, 8, 24, 78915)

>>> print(datetime.datetime.now().time())
15:08:24.789150

See the documentation for more information.

To save typing, you can import the datetime object from the datetime module:

>>> from datetime import datetime

Then remove the leading datetime. from all of the above.

Best Solution

Related Solutions

Python – How to execute a program or call a system command

Python – How to get the current time in Python

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