Can't print french accents with python and subprocess

Question

I'm trying to get the files and directories of the current working directory with

info = subprocess.run("dir", shell=True, capture_output=True)
print(info.stdout)

but I have files with é and they are printed as , instead...

I also have a problem with the free bytes, I get that :

49ÿ372ÿ921ÿ856 octets libres

I tried to decode it but I get an error saying AttributeError: 'std_output' object has no attribute 'decode'

So apparently it's already decoded.

What version of Python is this? Presumably you are using Windows here? — Martijn Pieters, Jun 05 '20 at 19:22

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 05 '20 at 19:23

0

The accent aigu "é" is actually two characters when put in a UTF string. It's "´ – e", so this is the expected behavior.

Also, you don't need subprocess for listing a directory. You could just do:

import os
os.listdir(".")

answered Jun 05 '20 at 19:23

Iman Akbari

thanks, but I need subprocess for other things in that program – Gontran Macedoine Jun 05 '20 at 19:28
so I'd like to fix the problem with the subprocess library, how could I do that ? – Gontran Macedoine Jun 05 '20 at 19:35
and with that command I don't get the same output as with `dir`, I don't have the size of the files etc – Gontran Macedoine Jun 05 '20 at 19:53
for your last question, here's how to get the size: `[(f, os.path.getsize(f)) for f in os.listdir(".")]` running a shell child process for something you can easily do in native python is generally considered to be a bad practice. – Iman Akbari Jun 05 '20 at 21:00
If you just have to run a shell command, I guess `subprocess.check_output` is what you're looking for. – Iman Akbari Jun 05 '20 at 21:01
thanks for the comand, however, I don't get any output, I have to print it and it's a list. Is that normal ? – Gontran Macedoine Jun 06 '20 at 06:19
Yes, `check_output` gives you the command's output in its return value and you can decide whether you wanna print it or parse it or whatever. – Iman Akbari Jun 08 '20 at 00:54

1 Answers1