python - How can I specify working directory for popen

Question

Is there a way to specify the running directory of command in Python's subprocess.Popen()?

For example:

Popen('c:\mytool\tool.exe', workingdir='d:\test\local')

My Python script is located in C:\programs\python

Is is possible to run C:\mytool\tool.exe in the directory D:\test\local?

How do I set the working directory for a sub-process?

keep in mind that subprocess.call is just a thin wrapper over subprocess.Popen, and this wrapper deals with all arguments of Popen as well, at least as far as I remember :) In simple cases, better stick to subprocess.call — shabunc

Mark Rushakoff Mark Rushakoff · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-06T03:10:03

subprocess.Popen takes a cwd argument to set the Current Working Directory; you'll also want to escape your backslashes ('d:\\test\\local'), or use r'd:\test\local' so that the backslashes aren't interpreted as escape sequences by Python. The way you have it written, the \t part will be translated to a tab.

So, your new line should look like:

subprocess.Popen(r'c:\mytool\tool.exe', cwd=r'd:\test\local')

To use your Python script path as cwd, import os and define cwd using this:

os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))

python - How can I specify working directory for popen

1 Answers