Problem with subprocess.call

Question

In my current working directory I have the dir ROOT/ with some files inside.

I know I can exec cp -r ROOT/* /dst and I have no problems.

But if I open my Python console and I write this:

import subprocess
subprocess.call(['cp', '-r', 'ROOT/*', '/dst'])

It doesn't work!

I have this error: cp: cannot stat ROOT/*: No such file or directory

Can you help me?

Answer 1

The * will not be expanded to filenames. This is a function of the shell. Here you actually want to copy a file named *. Use subprocess.call() with the parameter shell=True.

Answer 2

Try

subprocess.call('cp -r ROOT/* /dst', shell=True)

Note the use of a single string rather than an array here.

Or build up your own implementation with listdir and copy