How to escape os.system() calls? Ask Question

How to escape os.system() calls? Ask Question

When using os.system() it's often necessary to escape filenames and other arguments passed as parameters to commands. How can I do this? Preferably something that would work on multiple operating systems/shells but in particular for bash.

I'm currently doing the following, but am sure there must be a library function for this, or at least a more elegant/robust/efficient option:

def sh_escape(s):
   return s.replace("(","\\(").replace(")","\\)").replace(" ","\\ ")

os.system("cat %s | grep something | sort > %s" 
          % (sh_escape(in_filename), 
             sh_escape(out_filename)))

Edit: I've accepted the simple answer of using quotes, don't know why I didn't think of that; I guess because I came from Windows where ' and " behave a little differently.

Regarding security, I understand the concern, but, in this case, I'm interested in a quick and easy solution which os.system() provides, and the source of the strings is either not user-generated or at least entered by a trusted user (me).

ベストアンサー1

shlex.quote() does what you want since python 3.

(Use pipes.quote to support both python 2 and python 3, though note that pipes has been deprecated since 3.10 and slated for removal in 3.13)

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