Can't run files with space in path via external terminal

I dumped the cmd being called from spyder.util.programs (line 764ish) with a simple print statement, and nothing seems immediately wrong, but [WinError 267] The directory name is invalid is consistently thrown.

Cmd:

start cmd.exe /K “cd “Y:\Users\aaron\python scripts” && “C:\Users\aaron\python\py39\python.exe” -i “Y:\Users\aaron\python scripts\helloworld.py”” ^&^& exit

I can even separately copy and paste the command into a different terminal (just python inside cmd; no IDE) and call the following without issue:

from subprocess import Popen
Popen(r'start cmd.exe /K "cd "Y:\Users\aaron\python scripts" && "C:\Users\aaron\python\py39\python.exe" -i "Y:\Users\aaron\python scripts\helloworld.py"" ^&^& exit', shell=True)

Including the cwd arg does not make a difference either when using Popen myself, but if I modify spyder.utils.programs.py at line 762 to be:

        try:
            # if wdir:
            #     run_shell_command(cmd, cwd=wdir)
            # else:
                run_shell_command(cmd)

the problem is solved.

Am I missing something, or does the “cd” command included in the cmd string take care of not needing the cwd argument? I also cannot figure out why it’s an issue for spyder to include cwd but not when I do it in a terminal myself…

• Spyder version: 5.3.0 None
• Python version: 3.9.6 64-bit
• Qt version: 5.12.10
• PyQt5 version: 5.12.3
• Operating System: Windows 10

[ccordoba12]

@mrclary, could you give us a hand with this one, since it seems you understand well what needs to be done? Thanks!

[mrclary]

here wdir is not a quoted string.

Isn’t it? The quotes get added before the OS switching at line 737

You are correct. I miss-read the code.

Will it work on windows if there are spaces in wdir but we don’t quote it? i.e. cwd='path with space'

I believe it is required to be un-quoted when it is passed as the cwd argument to Popen (inside run_shell_command) at least on Windows, however it seems like Linux and MacOS scripts may still need wdir to be quoted because they are used to build shell commands as strings / shell script. I don’t have linux on any of my computers, but I think it needs to be tested.

The linux logic could possibly be simplified as it seems specifying the "wdir-option" in the command args as well as passing wdir to run_shell_command seems redundant like the Windows case.

Yes, I think it most pythonic to use the cwd keyword argument wherever possible; it likely requires unquoted string for all platforms, but should be verified. For linux, then, wdir-option could be removed and cd should be removed from both nt and darwin, with cwd added to the darwin case. The temporary file may not be necessary for darwin either, but I’d have to verify the interaction of Terminal.app with the provided env keyword for Popen…