Question

How do I find the program associated with a given file type using Python under Windows?

For example, given http I’d like python to determine the default browser. I can do this from a cmd prompt by running ‘ftype http’. Windows gives me the full path to the browser.

I’ve tried:

subprocess.call(['http://www.google.com'])

which results in: WindowsError: [Error 2] The system cannot find the file specified

subprocess.check_call(['cmd', 'ftype', 'http'])

which launches a cmd window, but doesn’t do anything else

Answer 1

You’re missing the ‘/c’ option that configures cmd to run a command and then exit:

subprocess.check_output(['cmd', '/c', 'ftype http'])