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Can't get working command line on prompt to work on subprocess

I need to extract text from a PDF. I tried the PyPDF2, but the textExtract method returned an encrypted text, even though the pdf is not encrypted acoording to the isEncrypted method.
So I moved on to trying accessing a program that does the job from the command prompt, so I could call it from python with the subprocess module. I found this program called textExtract, which did the job I wanted with the following command line on cmd:
"textextract.exe" "download.pdf" /to "download.txt"
However, when I tried running it with subprocess I couldn't get a 0 return code.
Here is the code I tried:
textextract = shlex.split(r'"textextract.exe" "download.pdf" /to "download.txt"')
subprocess.run(textextract)
I already tried it with shell=True, but it didn't work.
Can anyone help me?

I was able to get the following script to work from the command line after installing the PDF2Text Pilot application you're trying to use:
import shlex
import subprocess
args = shlex.split(r'"textextract.exe" "download.pdf" /to "download.txt"')
print('args:', args)
subprocess.run(args)
Sample screen output of running it from a command line session:
> C:\Python3\python run-textextract.py
args: ['textextract.exe', 'download.pdf', '/to', 'download.txt']
Progress:
Text from "download.pdf" has been successfully extracted...
Text extraction has been completed!
The above output was generated using Python 3.7.0.
I don't know if your use of spyder on anaconda affects things or not since I'm not familiar with it/them. If you continue to have problems with this, then, if it's possible, I suggest you see if you can get things working directly—i.e. running the the Python interpreter on the script manually from the command line similar to what's shown above. If that works, but using spyder doesn't, then you'll at least know the cause of the problem.

There's no need to build a string of quoted strings and then parse that back out to a list of strings. Just create a list and pass that:
command=["textextract.exe", "download.pdf", "/to", "download.txt"]
subprocess.run(command)
All that shlex.split is doing is creating a list by removing all of the quotes you had to add when creating the string in the first place. That's an extra step that provides no value over just creating the list yourself.

Calling and running other python files from a python file

so i checked several other links with similar titles but, It couldn't solve my specific question. I'm trying to run a python file in notepad++ which is not a problem to me however, this file takes in a few things in order for it to compile. This is how I successfully run it in the command prompt.
python upload.py --file= "video path" --title= "title" --description= "testing"
My question is, how would i set these attributes in a different python file and then just call that file instead?
here is my code that i have in my new file
Thanks
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You can use the subprocess module to do this. Following the example from the docs and the code you've listed:
import subprocess
result = subprocess.check_output('python upload.py --file="video path" --title="title" --description="testing"')
result will store any output from your command.
Note: if you're running in a windows environent, not linux, change the /usr/bin/python to python.

Maybe you can use subprocess to call your specific command.
In a separate file in the same folder, you can put a file like this:
import subprocess
subprocess.call("python upload.py --file= \"video path\" --title= \"title\" --description= \"testing\"")
And then you just call that file, and that's it...

python library 'json' prints everything twice

I decided to make a very simple program to get started with json in Python 3.4.3
However, it seemed I only write two lines before I encountered something weird; it prints everything twice. The program is just this:
import json
jsonFile = open('TODO.json','r').read()
print(jsonFile)
This prints the string twice. If I remove the 'import json' it works just fine. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance

Okay, so I named py file json.py. Did not think that through

Playing Audio with subprocess.call in Python

I wanted to play a .wav file, without using external modules, and i read i could do that using this:
def play(audio_file_path):
subprocess.call(["ffplay", "-nodisp", "-autoexit", /Users/me/Downloads/sample.wav])
I however get:
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
If i use os.path.realpath to get the absolute path of the file, i get just the same thing. (The path i see at get info)
Environment is OSX, Python 2.7
Can someone tell me what i am doing wrong? I am new to Python (and to Programming).

There are multiple problems.
Indentation
Code inside the function should be indented, to show that it is part of the function
File name should be in a quotes
It should be a string
It should be:
def play(audio_file_path):
subprocess.call(["ffplay", "-nodisp", "-autoexit", "/Users/me/Downloads/sample.wav"])

Syntax for input redirection in IDLE

I need to enter the contents of a text (.txt) file as input for a Python (.py) file. Assuming the name of the text file is TextFile and the name of the Python file PythonFile, then the code should be as follows:
python PythonFile.py < TextFile.txt
Yet, when I try to do this in IDLE and type in
import PythonFile < TextFile,
IDLE gives me an invalid syntax message, pointing to the < sign. I tried all sorts of variations on this theme (i.e.,using or not using the file name extensions), but still got the same invalid-syntax message. How is the syntax different for input redirection in IDLE?

If it works in the command line, then why do you want to do this in IDLE? There are ways to achieve a similar result using, for example, subprocess, but a better way would be to refactor PythonFile.py so that you can call a function from it, e.g.:
>>> import PythonFile
>>> PythonFile.run_with_input('TextFile.txt')
If you post the contents of PythonFile.py, we might be able to help you do this.