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I have to run an external program from python. External program makes many temporary files (which conflict with other instance of same program). My strategy is

Get current directory (native) path, change to temp directory, run external command, copy output to native directory, change back to native directory.

Here is my code 

import os, tempfile
current_dir = os.getcwd()
tmp_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
input_file, outfile = 'input_file', 'result'
os.system('cp %s %s' %(input_file, tmp_dir)) 
os.chdir(tmp_dir)
cmd = 'pwd> tmp_01.txt;ls -ltr >>tmp_01.txt' ##system command goes here
os.system(cmd)
os.system('cp tmp_01.txt %s/%s' %(current_dir, outfile))
os.chdir(current_dir)

My questions are:

  • Is it right or there are simple way to do it?

  • Do I need to remove the tmp directory?

  • Is it safe to use this code as python module/class in a web application? Does it makes shell injection essay or can possible reveal more information then needed?

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1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote

Give a try to shutil and subprocess.

To copy all the files: http://docs.python.org/2/library/shutil.html#shutil.copyfile

import shutil
shutil.copy(src_file, destination_file)

To make the system calls: http://docs.python.org/2/library/subprocess.html#subprocess.check_call

import subprocess
subprocess.check_call('ls -al', shell=True)
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