os.system(cmd) isn't working

[Tim Golden]

[Gregory Piñero]
| 
| I'm trying to run this statement:
| 
| os.system(r'"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"' + '
| "www.blendedtechnologies.com"')
| 
| The goal is to have firefox open to that website.
| 
| When I type r'"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"' + '
| "www.blendedtechnologies.com"' in the python interpreter I get:
| 
| '"C:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe"
| "www.blendedtechnologies.com"'
| 
| And when I copy this into my command prompt (less outermost ' )
| firefox opens up to that page like I would expect.  However in python
| nothing happens and I get exit status 1.

This is only half an answer, but I personally find faffing
about with the double-quote / double-backslash stuff between
Python and Windows a pain in the neck, so where I can I avoid it.

In this case, you have a few options:

1) Use the webbrowser module.

import webbrowser
webbrowser.open ("www.blendedtechnologies.com")

2) Use os.startfile (or its beefed-up cousin win32api.ShellExecute):

import os
os.startfile ("http://www.blendedtechnologies.com")

3) Find out from Windows where the default browser is:
(There are alternative ways of doing this, for 
example querying the registry for AppPaths).

import os
import tempfile
import win32api

f = tempfile.TemporaryFile (suffix=".html")
hInstance, exe_filename = win32api.FindExecutable (f.name)
os.system ("%s %s" % (exe_filename, "www.blendedtechnologies.com"))


Hope all that leads you somewhere. Obviously, it doesn't
answer the underlying question about double-slashes and
quotes and so on, but it seems to meet your current need.
TJG

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