I need a list made out of a call such as os.system('ls ' + path)

Question

I really need a list out of a system call such as os.system('ls ' + input) I've tried googling of course, but didn't find much.

Also tried different ways of coding it but I cannot get it to work.

import os

user_input = input("Specify directory: ")
directory = os.system('ls ' + str(user_input))
------------------------------------------------------------------
# I need a list made out of the directory variable.
# Also note that subprocessing doesn't work that well as it doesn't accept # bash special chars like '~/', whereas os.system() accepts that.
# What os.system(), subprocess.call() return is just a normal output and I # cannot get to list that.
# Also I have gotten my program to work with os.listdir() but os.listdir() # doesn't accept special chars like '~/'.

Obviously I would greatly appreciate it if somebody could give me a hand with this problem.

Thanks.

There are better ways to list out the files in a directory, do you really need to use `ls`? — Sayse, May 01 '19 at 08:11
Possible duplicate of [How do I list all files of a directory?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3207219/how-do-i-list-all-files-of-a-directory) — Sayse, May 01 '19 at 08:13
@Netwave, for some reason that doesn't work as I have tried it several times. Thanks though. — edvin, May 01 '19 at 08:13
@Sayse, I already tried os.listdir(), the problem is that it doesn't comply with special shell chars like '~/' or '~/path/to/file/' — edvin, May 01 '19 at 08:14

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 01 '19 at 08:12

1

You can handle ~ in the input. And ., .. too.

os.listdir(os.path.abspath(os.path.expanduser(user_input)))

Ref: https://docs.python.org/2/library/os.path.html#os.path.expanduser

https://docs.python.org/2/library/os.path.html#os.path.abspath

answered May 01 '19 at 08:12

rdas

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I need a list made out of a call such as os.system('ls ' + path)

Also tried different ways of coding it but I cannot get it to work.

1 Answers1