os.system/os.popen does not open cmd

Question

Hi All,

I'm using the python tool in atleryx to perform some automated task in excel and ran into below.

Issue:

os.system/os.popen works on simple cmd like calculator, but does not work on network drive cmd function.

Example

import os

os.system('calc'). This works

import os

os.system('abc')  This doesn't work  (abc is not a windows built-in cmd. It's an in-house cmd to launch specific function excel. Location of this cmd is on network drive). It would return an output of 255.

I've tried the full network path of the cmd. Still doesn't work

Using full network path of the cmd in 'event' tab in workflow configuration, this works. Also, usingi os.system in Anaconda (Python environment),

Any idea why such difference?

TessaS · Accepted Answer

Hi @yunpeng

When you say full network path, do you mean a UNC path? It should be returning a UNC path in order for it to function.

I'm not exactly sure what the difference is but I'm not surprised there is a difference. Processes in the Event tab are being executed by Alteryx while something in the Python tool will be executed by python.exe in the Jupyter notebook so it's two different engines handling that process.

If executing within the Event tab is a possible solution, I would pursue that route as Python tool can have some limitations when working with Excel spreadsheets popping up.

Thanks!