How do I execute a complex shell find command from Python?

Question

I'm trying to execute a complex shell command from inside of python. The naive attempt:

subprocess.call(["find", ".", "-exec touch {} \;"], cwd=".")

is failing. How do I go about doing this?

tdelaney · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-14 01:18:11Z

7

subprocess.call(["find", ".", "-exec", "touch", "{}", ";"])

cwd="." Is not needed as it is the default.

answered Sep 13, 2013 at 22:55

tdelaney

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1 Comment

Defaulting to "." is an extension (I think it is a GNU extension). The standard requires a path in the command line.