Question

I am using python to read 2 files from my linux os. One contains a single entry/number ‘DATE’:

20111125

the other file contains many entries, ‘TIME’:

042844UTC
044601UTC
...
044601UTC

I am able to read the files to assign to proper variables. I would like to then use the variables to create folder paths, move files etc… such as:

$PATH/20111125/042844UTC
$PATH/20111125/044601UTC
$PATH/20111125/044601UTC

and so on.

Somehow this doesn’t work with multiple variables passed at once:

import subprocess, sys, os, os.path
DATEFILE = open('/Astronomy/Sorted/2-Scratch/MAPninox-DATE.txt', "r")
TIMEFILE = open('/Astronomy/Sorted/2-Scratch/MAPninox-TIME.txt', "r")
for DATE in DATEFILE:
    print DATE,
for TIME in TIMEFILE:
    os.popen('mkdir -p /Astronomy/' + DATE + '/' TIME) # this line works for DATE only
    os.popen('mkdir -p /Astronomy/20111126/' + TIME) # this line works for TIME only
    subprocess.call(['mkdir', '-p', '/Astronomy/', DATE]), #THIS LINE DOESN'T WORK

Thanks!

Answer 1

I would suggest using os.makedirs (which does the same thing as mkdir -p) instead of subprocess or popen:

import sys
import os
DATEFILE = open(os.path.join(r'/Astronomy', 'Sorted', '2-Scratch', 'MAPninox-DATE.txt'), "r")
TIMEFILE = open(os.path.join(r'/Astronomy', 'Sorted', '2-Scratch', 'MAPninox-TIME.txt'), "r")

for DATE in DATEFILE:
    print DATE,

for TIME in TIMEFILE:
    os.makedirs(os.path.join(r'/Astronomy', DATE, TIME))

    astrDir = os.path.join(r'/Astronomy', '20111126', TIME)
    try
        os.makedirs(astrDir)
    except os.error:
        print "Dir %s already exists, moving on..." % astrDir
    # etc...

Then use shutil for any cp/mv/etc operations.

---

From the os Docs:

os.makedirs(path[, mode])
Recursive directory creation function. Like mkdir(), but makes all
intermediate-level directories needed to contain the leaf directory.
Raises an error exception if the leaf directory already exists or
cannot be created. The default mode is 0777 (octal). On some systems,
mode is ignored. Where it is used, the current umask value is first
masked out.