We Keep Coding

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.

Python subprocess.call with multiline string EOF

I've hit a issue that I don't really understand how to overcome. I'm trying to create a subprocess in python to run another python script. Not too difficult. The issue is I'm unable to get around is EOF error when a python file includes a super long string.
Here's an example of what my files look like.
Subprocess.py:
### call longstr.py from the primary pyfile
subprocess.call(['python longstr.py'], shell = True)
Longstr.py
### called from subprocess.py
### the actual string is a lot longer; this is an example to illustrate how the string is formatted
lngstr = """here is a really long
string (which has many n3w line$ and "characters")
that are causing the python file to state the file is ending early
"""
print lngstr
Printer error in terminal
SyntaxError: EOF while scanning triple-quoted string literal
As a work around, I tried to remove all linebreaks as well as all spaces to see if it was due to it being multi-line. That still returned the same result.
My assumption is that when the subprocess is running and the shell is doing something with the file contents, when the new line is reached the shell itself is freaking out and that's what's terminating the process; not the file.
What is the correct workaround for having subprocess run a file like this?
Thank you for your help.

Answering my own question here; my problem was that I didn't file.close() before trying to execute a subprocess.call.
If you encounter this problem, and are working with recently written files this could be your issue too. Thank you to everyone who read or responded to this thread.

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"])

Why do I get a SyntaxError <unicode error> on my import statement? Should this not be simple?

Here's my first simple test program in Python. Without importing the os library the program runs fine... Leading me to believe there's something wrong with my import statement, however this is the only way i ever see them written. Why am I still getting a syntax error?
import os # <-- why does this line give me a syntax error?!?!?! <unicode error> -->
CalibrationData = r'C:/Users/user/Desktop/blah Redesign/Data/attempts at data gathering/CalibrationData.txt'
File = open(CalibrationData, 'w')
File.write('Test')
File.close()
My end goal is to write a simple program that will look through a directory and tabularize data from relevant .ini files within it.
Well, as MDurant pointed out... I pasted in some unprintable character - probably when i entered the URL.

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.