from bash to python to find the space bug

I spent two days going nuts over a Python script not recognizing directories properly when passing them from a bash script. I was doing something like: (passing in a list of directories from command line to python)

python main.py --result_dir "folder/dir_1, folder/dir_2"

And in the python script main.py, parse the list of strings and on…

result_dir_list = [f for f in result_dir.split(',')]
# some operations following

For now the code doesn’t work.

It turns out that the extra space after the comma (“folder/dir_1, folder/dir_2”) meant Python saw " folder/dir_2" with a leading space, which didn’t match the real folder name. Removing that extra space fixed everything:

result_dir_list = [f.strip() for f in result_dir.split(',')]

Bash doesn’t ignore spaces unless you explicitly handle them🤦🏻‍♀️