Untarring in python, interactive vs script call
Question: I am trying to untar a tar file via `popen` (`from platform import popen`) and
am running into problems. The command runs if I use the interactive script,
but does not if I put it in a .py file and run it.

Basically, I change to to that directory and run `popen("tar xvf
the_tar.tar")`

Why would these be different? How come it does not run in the script?
Identical code between the interactive session and the script!

Edit:

The exact script is as follows

    
    
    import os, time
    from platform import popen
    
    os.chdir("C:/testing/")
    popen("tar -xvf the_tar.tar")
    


Answer: You should use the `tarfile` library:

    
    
    from tarfile import TarFile
    
    tar = TarFile("the_tar.tar")
    tar.extractall()
    

