convert output of find command into array of strings in python

Question

I want to simulate the following unix commands:

f=`find . -name "*.pdf"`
for file in $f; do echo "$f"; done

I have the following python command:

out= subprocess.check_output(["/usr/bin/find", ".", "-name",  "*.pdf"]).strip()

But I can't access out[0] or out[1] and so on. Is it possible to return the output in python as an array of strings, so I can iterate over each of them and do something with it? Thanks

This is just an example I came up with to illustrate what I want. To rephrase this in another way - I want to execute a command which returns output, and I want to iterate over each line in that output generated. So os.walk() wouldn't help in that use case. — Bill
– Bill, Commented Dec 13, 2014 at 15:25

falsetru · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-13 15:27:24Z

3

str.strip() remove spaces around the string. You need to str.splitlines to split lines:

>>> 'a\nb'.strip()
'a\nb'
>>> 'a\nb\n'.splitlines()
['a', 'b']

out = subprocess.check_output(["/usr/bin/find", ".", "-name",  "*.pdf"]).splitlines()

answered Dec 13, 2014 at 15:27

falsetru

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6 Comments

Bill Over a year ago

Awesome! exactly what I was looking for.

tripleee Over a year ago

No, the use of strip is incorrect, and the use of splitlines() is wrong if find ever outputs a file name which contains a newline. The safe, reliable way is to use find -print0 and split on nulls. This is a FAQ.

Bill Over a year ago

@tripleee How do u split on nulls?

falsetru Over a year ago

@Bill, line.split('\0') ('\0' means null character)

falsetru Over a year ago

@tripleee, Thank you for pointing filenames with newline. BTW, if OP really want to list files, OP could use os.walk instead of subprocess.*. str.strip was used to demonstrate that the method is not what OP want.

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