Subprocess cp returns error - bufsize must be integer [duplicate]

I'm trying to copy from one directory to another, and rename them at the same time by calling 'cp' like so:

directories = ['/Users/Me/Folder1/File1.txt', '/Users/Me/Folder/File2.txt'] output = ['/Users/Me/Folder2/Hello.txt', 'Users/Me/Folder2/World.txt'] for in, out, in zip(directories, output): subprocess.call('cp', in, out) 

But it returns:

 File "./test.py", line 33, in <module> subprocess.call('cp', in, out) File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.10_2/Frameworks/", line 522, in call return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait() File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.10_2/Frameworks/", line 659, in __init__ raise TypeError("bufsize must be an integer") TypeError: bufsize must be an integer 

What am I doing wrong?

1 Answer

You've got two problems:

1 - subprocess.call() expects a list of arguments, not multiple arguments:

#wrong subprocess.call('cp', in, out) #right subprocess.call(['cp', in, out]) 

2 - in is a python reserved keyword, change it to something like inp:

#wrong subprocess.call(['cp', in, out]) #right subprocess.call(['cp', inp, out])