Executing Linux command in Python with special characters

Question

I just want to execute the command rm /tmp/*.idx from a python script. I have read that os.system is deprecated (IT IS NOT, see the comments), so I'm trying with Popen the following:

proc = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split('rm /tmp/*.idx'))
proc.communicate()

after of course importing shlex and subprocess , but it doesn't erase the files.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Glob patterns are shell syntax. So:

subprocess.Popen("rm /tmp/*.idx", shell=True)