Question

I coincidentally found out that I cannot change the actual directory from within a python-code. My Test-Program is as follows:

from os import system

def sh(script):
    system("bash -c '%s'" % script)

sh("cd /home")
sh("pwd")

The output of pwd is not /home, but the directory where the code above lives.

Can someone explain why this happens?

Answer 1

The problem is that you execute shell commands instead of actually changing the directory using os.chdir()

Each os.system() call executes the given command in a new shell – so the script’s working directory is not affected at all.