How to use the mv command in Python with subprocess

Question

I have a lot of files in /home/somedir/subdir/ and I\'m trying to move them all up to /home/somedir programmatically.

right now I have this:

subprocess.c         


        

Answer 1

You are using shell globbing *, and expecting the mv command to know what it means. You can get the same error from a command shell this way:

$ mv 'somedir/subdir/*' ...

Notice the quotes. The shell usually does glob-matching on * for you, but commands don't do that on their command lines; not even a shell does. There is a C library function called fnmatch that does shell-style globbing for you, which every programming language more or less copies. It might even have the same name in Python. Or it might have the word "glob" in it; I don't remember.