[Tutor] batch file processing w/ python using cmd line executable?

[kevin parks]

hi

I am new territory here and not even sure where to start poking around  
other than the os module some.

Essentially i need to do something like a shell script for batch  
processing gobs of files. I am trying to use a command line tool (sox,  
an open source sound file converter that runs from the unix command  
line) and I don't want to edit the command line, run the job, edit the  
command line, etc over and over again for hundreds of small files.

I wonder if it is possible to use python to call sox and have it do  
os.mkdir, process all the input files in a particular directory and  
put the converted files into the directory it made with mkdir...

so if i had

kp/flute/ST

  kp8/flute/ST/foo01.aif
  kp8/flute/ST/foo02.aif
  kp8/flute/ST/foo03.aif
  kp8/flute/ST/foo04.aif
  kp8/flute/ST/foo05.aif

The script would call sox repeatedly and create a new dir with a  
converted file for each found in the original folder. like so:

kp/flute/STout/

  kp/flute/STout/foo01.wav
  kp/flute/STout/foo02.wav
  kp/flute/STout/foo03.wav
  kp/flute/STout/foo04.wav
  kp/flute/STout/foo05.wav

what makes this especially hairy is that sox is a monster an typically  
needs a crazy number of arguments, though these would be the same for  
the whole batch. A typical command line call i need to make to, say,  
batch convert files from one sample rate and bit depth to another  
would look like so:

% sox -V3 -D -S St.01.aif -b16  kp/flute/STout/St.01.wav rate -s -v  
44100

Is there away to do this in python, by just pointing it to a whole dir  
of files and say "do it" to all of these?

cheers,

kevin