Run shell commands from python and string concatenation

I am trying to adjust the "post to dropbox" services for Snow loepard (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1144075/Post%20to%20Dropbox.zip). I dont want the public URL, but a shortened one from goo.gl

Therefor I am using these shell commands:

curl -s --开发者_开发技巧data-urlencode "url=http://link.com" http://googl/action/shorten | grep "googl" | awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1)}' | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "=" } ; { print $2}' | pbcopy

Now the python script does this to copy a dropbox URL for all the files it just copies in the public folder to the clipboard:

    pasteURLs = []

for file in copied_files: # for all elements in our list
    components = file.split(os.sep)    # seperate the path
    local_dir = os.sep.join(components[5:])    # cut off the beginning
    local_dir = urllib.quote(local_dir) # convert it to a URL (' ' -> '%20', etc.)
    #construct the URL
    finalURL = 'http://dl.dropbox.com/u/%s/%s' % ( dropbox_id, local_dir )
    pasteURLs.append(finalURL) # add the current URL to the string

copy_string = "\n".join(pasteURLs)
os.system( "echo '%s' | pbcopy" % (copy_string) ) # put the string into clipboard

I have to admit I dont know anything about python, but from what it looks like, I need to change the last two lines with this:

shortURL = []
for thisURL in pasteURLs:
        shortURL = os.system( curl -s --data-urlencode "url=http://link.com" http://googl/action/shorten | grep "goo.gl" | awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1)}' | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "=" } ; { print $2}' | pbcopy )
    shortURLs.append(shortURL)

copy_string = "\n".join(shortURLs)
os.system( "echo '%s' | pbcopy" % (copy_string) ) # put the string into clipboard

But my problem is, how to put the correct URL in the command? As u can see it says http://link.com But it should use thisURL instead.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

I think your os.system call should look something like this:

os.system("curl -s --data-urlencode \"url=%s\" http://goo.gl/action/shorten | grep \"goo.gl\" | awk -F\\\" '{print $(NF-1)}' | awk 'BEGIN { FS = \"=\" } ; { print $2}' | pbcopy " % thisURL)

UPDATE I wrote the script for you and used a much simpler command pipeline. Not that the entire thing could be done in python without curl, but here it is.

import subprocess
thisURL = 'http://whatever.com'
pipeline = []
pipeline.append('curl -s -i --data-urlencode "url=%s" ' % thisURL +
    'http://goo.gl/action/shorten')
pipeline.append('grep Location:')
pipeline.append('cut -d = -f 2-')
#pipeline.append('pbcopy')
command = "|".join(pipeline)
link, ignore = subprocess.Popen(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
        shell=True).communicate()
print link

Other answers have already provided the core of this: use quotation marks around your command, use a format string to insert the value and consider using subprocess in order to actually get the output from the command.

However, if you, like me, think this is getting a bit too convoluted, go have a look at this example on how to do the actual shortening in python. If you're new to python, this might mean you'll need to read up on your exception handling to understand it. (It also looks like you might need a custom module, but then again it appears to only be used if you get an exception...)