Python Forum

Hello,

I need to build a command and pass it to an external application.

Filenames may have spaces in them, so I must double quote them, but I can't figure out how:

fullstring="-t "
files = sys.argv[1]
output = sys.argv[2]

for filename in glob(files):
	#BAD fullstring = fullstring + f" -i gpx -f '{filename}'"
	#BAD fullstring = fullstring + f" -i gpx -f \"{filename}\""
	#BAD fullstring = fullstring + f" -i gpx -f ""{filename}"""
fullstring = f"gpsbabel {fullstring} -x track,discard -o gpx -F {output}"
print(fullstring)
subprocess.run(fullstring)

FWIW, I'm using Windows, but users might run this script on other OS's.

Thank you.

Hi,
so you want to append strings like this -i gpx -f "some\file name.txt" to the fullstring, right? Or do you want to append strings like this: -i gpx -f ""some/file name.txt"".
If you want to append one of these cases just surround the new string with single quotes, so do something like this:

fullstring = fullstring + f' -i gpx -f "{filename}"'

I hope I understood you correctly

Simple enough :-)

Thank you.