Python String Literal Inside Popen command

Question

I am trying to pass a string literal to a Popen command, but it is isn't working:

subprocess.Popen(['/usr/bin/festival', '-b', '(SayText "%s")']) % text

The idea is that I want to pass text into the Popen command, which calls the program festival, which will read the input text.

Is it possible to pass a string literal inside a popen command? My guess is that this isn't working because the Popen commands are in a list.

phihag · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-01 15:57:31Z

1

You are correct, format the list element, and not the result of Popen or the argument list:

festivalCmd = '(SayText "%s")' % text.replace('"', '')
subprocess.Popen(['/usr/bin/festival', '-b', festivalCmd])

The call to replace ensures that you're correctly handing inputs like foo"bar without failing.

answered Apr 1, 2012 at 15:57

phihag

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1 Comment

this doesn't seem to work for me, for a list.. but to use a much simpler example. gist.github.com/gartha1/29ac8d4431f0bb019ef017e467d01e67 now look at the output from wmic or task manager, re the command line gist.github.com/gartha1/eae1a16d55950fc5312ed01a461191bf c:\windows\system32\calc.exe "--profile-directory=\"Profile 3\"" Or if I try to use the example you do.. gist.github.com/gartha1/9d70278a278a8840cf14908ef5600572 it still doesn' tpass literal quotes correctly.

Sencer H. · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-25 09:01:46Z

0

Your syntax is wrong. I don't know much about festival speech synth system but if you wrote it like this, that would be work:

subprocess.Popen(['/usr/bin/festival', '-b', '(SayText "%s")' % text])

answered Jul 25, 2013 at 8:54

Sencer H.

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