Why does subprocess.run create return code 1 even if the command was successful? [closed]-CodePudding

From within python, I am trying to check if chocolatey is installed on a windows machine. I used subprocess.run to implement that, however, the return code is 1 even if chocolatey is installed.

Here is my code:

import subprocess

result = subprocess.run(['choco'], capture_output=True, text=True)
print(result.returncode)

Adding options won't help. If I test a windows command like dir everything works as expected. Where is my mistake here?

CodePudding user response：

It totally depends on the value returned by your program with different arguments.

For example, when I run the following on my computer (git is installed):

result = subprocess.run(['git'], capture_output=True)

result.returncode is 1

If I run git with parameter --version like this:

result = subprocess.run(['git','--version'], capture_output=True)

result.returncode is 0

To really check if a program exists or not (on Windows) you could do something like:

try:
    result = subprocess.run(['choco'], capture_output=True)
    print(result)
except FileNotFoundError:
    print("Program not installed")

Check out this official documentation on Subprocess

CodePudding user response：

You ran choco without any arguments, meaning it didn't get a command to perform. It's up to choco whether that's regarded as an error; I suspect it is, much like if you passed it an unknown command. You may want to pass it a command that should succeed, such as choco help.