How do I execute a program from Python? os.system fails due to spaces in path

Solution 1:

subprocess.call will avoid problems with having to deal with quoting conventions of various shells. It accepts a list, rather than a string, so arguments are more easily delimited. i.e.

import subprocess
subprocess.call(['C:\\Temp\\a b c\\Notepad.exe', 'C:\\test.txt'])

Solution 2:

Here's a different way of doing it.

If you're using Windows the following acts like double-clicking the file in Explorer, or giving the file name as an argument to the DOS "start" command: the file is opened with whatever application (if any) its extension is associated with.

filepath = 'textfile.txt'
import os
os.startfile(filepath)

Example:

import os
os.startfile('textfile.txt')

This will open textfile.txt with Notepad if Notepad is associated with .txt files.