Python subprocess.call doesn't work without shell=True

Question

I'm using Python to call cscope internally. For this I'm using subprocess.call .

The problem is that it's not working without shell=True

The following code works as expected:

import subprocess
subprocess.call("cscope -d -L0'temp'", shell=True)

But the following doesn't, it returns with 0 status code, but there is no output

import subprocess
subprocess.call(["cscope", "-d", "-L0'temp'"])

Any ideas as to why the above is happening?

Answer 1

Don't quote the arguments, the args are passed directly to the process without using the shell when shell=False:

subprocess.call(["cscope", "-d", "-L0","temp"])

You should use check_call:

from subprocess import check_call

check_call(["cscope", "-d", "-L0", "temp"])