[Tutor] How to pass a python variable to subprocess.call?

[Steve Willoughby]

On 25-Oct-10 15:19, Abhijeet Rastogi wrote:
> subprocess.call("ls -l "+mydir,shell=True)
> will do the job. In python, we can simply concatenate the strings like that.
>
>     How do I replace /usr/local/bin in the subprocess call with the
>     mydir variable?

It's often preferable (for reasons ranging from security to coding 
style) to use the array call style for the subprocess methods, so 
instead of a string which must then be interpreted by the shell (and 
allowing for unintended interpretation of shell characters like quotes 
and wildcards), you instead pass a list of values for the new process, 
so the shell is never even involved:

subprocess.call(['ls', '-l', mydir])