How to use the mv command in Python with subprocess

Question

I have a lot of files in /home/somedir/subdir/ and I'm trying to move them all up to /home/somedir programmatically.

right now I have this:

subprocess.call(["mv", "/home/somedir/subdir/*", "somedir/"])

but it's giving me this error:

mv: cannot stat `/home/somedir/subdir/*': No such file or directory

I know that it does exist because when I type the mv command by hand using the exact same command as the script uses it works perfectly.

Answer 1

if you call subprocess that way:

subprocess.call(["mv", "/home/somedir/subdir/*", "somedir/"])

you're actually giving the argument /home/somedir/subdir/* to the mv command, with an actual * file. i.e. you're actually trying to move the * file.

subprocess.call("mv /home/somedir/subdir/* somedir/", shell=True)

it will use the shell that will expand the first argument.

Nota Bene: when using the shell=True argument you need to change your argument list into a string that will be given to the shell.

Hint: You can also use the os.rename() or shutil.move() functions, along with os.path.walk() or os.listdir() to move the files to destination in a more pythonic way.