Question

I’m trying to create a series of tar files from within Python code. As a practice I have a subdirectory – ‘O’, which contains the files I want to tar. When I try typing

tar -cf O.tar ./O

from the command line, things work. But, when I enter the Python interpreter and enter

import subprocess
subprocess.call(["tar","-cf O.tar ./O"])

I get the following error:

tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive

Does this make sense? I tried

import os
os.listdir(".")

To make sure I could still see my “O” subdirectory from within the Python shell, and I can.

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

maybe.

import subprocess
subprocess.call(["tar","-cf", "O.tar", "./O"])