Python subprocess.check_output parsing error

Question

Hopefully a simple problem, using subprocess.check_output I am trying to execute sqlite3 and read in the output. There is a flag available for the sqlite3 CLI where you can initiate it with "-separator ','" to change the divider for output to a comma. It works at the command line, if I include it like this;

sqliteOutput = subprocess.check_output(["sqlite3 "," -separator ',' ",dbLocation,"SELECT blah from argh"])

Then it fails with an sqlite3 CLI error, "Error: too many options" and quotes the SELECT statement, but if I just run the command as above on a shell without the format for the subprocess command it works as expected.

If I run it again without the separator it runs perfectly, like so;

sqliteOutput = subprocess.check_output(["sqlite3 ",dbLocation,"SELECT blah from argh"])

Obviously I am either mis-understanding how it is interpreting the separator argument in the subprocess, is there a way I can modify it to function correctly? For the inquisitive, I cannot use the sqlite3 python library for this.

Answer 1

here's a correction:

["sqlite3 ", " -separator ',' ", dbLocation, "SELECT blah from argh"] # yours
["sqlite3", "-separator", ",", dbLocation, "SELECT blah from argh"] # mine

the space in the beginning of " -separatator" is wrong.

having "separator" and "," in one argument is wrong too.

space at the end of "sqlite3 " is wrong as well.