Question

I wrote this code and it is failing at line 11 on the “target_dir” command with invalid syntax I have a vm ubuntu and I just copy and pasted the code and it worked there but not in my win7 and I am not sure why. I was reading another question with similar code but it had a different error and noticed that someone said that some of these commands where obsolete so I was just wondering if that is so and I would just drop this book and move on to another one i just got.

Thanks in advance for the help,

# Filename: backup_ver1.py

import os
import time

# 1. The files and directories to be backed up are specified in a list.
source = ['"D:\\Warlock"', 'C:\\Druid'
# Notice we had to use double quotes inside the string for names with spaces in it.

# 2. The backup must be stored in a main backup directory
target_dir = r'C:\Backup' # Remember to change this to what you will be using


# 3. The files are backed up into zip file.
# 4. The name of the zip archive is the current date and time
target = target_dir + os.sep + time.strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S') + '.zip'

# 5. We use the zip commnad to put the files in a zip archive
zip_commnad = "7z a -tzip {0} {1}" .format(target, ' '.join(source))
    print(zip_command)

#Run the backup
if os.system(zip_command) == 0:
    print('Successful backup', target)
else:
    print('Backup FAILED')

Answer 1

source = ['"D:\\Warlock"', 'C:\\Druid' is missing an end bracket. Should be source = ['"D:\\Warlock"', 'C:\\Druid'].

Edit: Also,

zip_commnad = "7z a -tzip {0} {1}" .format(target, ' '.join(source))
    print(zip_command)

should be

zip_command = "7z a -tzip {0} {1}" .format(target, ' '.join(source))
print(zip_command)

i.e., spell command correctly and fix the indentation. Additionally, although defining the backup paths like you are is not an error, I’d agree with abaumg’s comment that using raw strings would be a lot clearer.