Passing variables to a subprocess call [duplicate]

I am trying to pass my variables from raw_input to my subprocess command. I am new to Python. Any help would he appreciated.

#!/usr/bin/python

import subprocess

print "\nWhat user name"
username = str(raw_input('username: '))
print "\nWhat is the user id"
userid = int(raw_input('Enter user id: '))
print "\nWhat is the user\'s primary group?"
primarygroup = int(raw_input('Enter group: '))
print "\nWhat is the user\'s secondary group?"
secondarygroup = int(raw_input('Enter group: '))

subprocess.call(['useradd' '-m' '-g' _primarygroup '-G' _secondarygroup '-u' _userid _username])

print"\nThe user has been added"

Solution 1:

Try separating the values with commas:

subprocess.call(['useradd', '-m', '-g', _primarygroup, '-G', _secondarygroup, '-u', _userid, _username])

See http://docs.python.org/library/subprocess.html#subprocess.call - It takes an array where the first argument is the program and all other arguments are passed as arguments to the program.

Also don't forget to check the return value of the function for a zero return code which means "success" unless it doesn't matter for your script if the user was added successfully or not.

Solution 2:

Try to add commas between your list items:

subprocess.call(['useradd', '-m', '-g', _primarygroup, '-G', _secondarygroup, \
                 '-u' ,_userid, _username])

subprocess.call takes the same arguments as subprocess.Popen:

args should be a string, or a sequence of program arguments.

Edit

To turn all your arguments into strings at once you could you a list comprehension:

args = ['useradd', '-m', '-g', _primarygroup, '-G', _secondarygroup, \
        '-u' ,_userid, _username]
str_args = [ str(x) for x in args ]

Solution 3:

You can create the arg string first and then just past this variable to the subprocess.call. For example:

projects_csv_fn = 'projects_csv_2.csv'
prjects_json_fn = 'projects.json'

args ='python json_to_csv.py id ' + prjects_json_fn + ' ' + projects_csv_fn

subprocess.call(args, shell=True)