While running python script as another user (with sudo), input string taken as variable name

Question

I have a simple python script, test.py:

x = input("Enter string")
print("Entered str: ", x)

I want to run the script as another user; lets call him scratch:

sudo -u scratch python test.py

The program waits for the console input. When I enter "abc", I encounter the following error:

Enter stringTraceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 1, in <module>
    x = input("Enter string")
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'abc' is not defined

I am not sure about the reason behind this and the fix for it.

kindall · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-29 14:50:52Z

2

input behaves differently in Python 2.x and 3.x. The other account has Python 2.x set as its default, or has a Python 2.x executable first in its PATH. Your usual account, on the other hand, is using a Python 3.x executable. Probably the best way to do this is to use the full path to the Python executable you want to use i the script's "shebang" line. For example:

#!/usr/bin/python3

(This path may need adjusting for your system. Try typing which python in your account to see what it's using.)

edited Aug 29, 2014 at 14:50

answered Aug 29, 2014 at 4:11

kindall

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Comments

shaktimaan · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-29 04:13:00Z

1

The issue is the code is using input() in a Python 2.7 environment (the other users' default python version probably). Try using raw_input() instead.

input() in a 2.7 behaves as a raw_input() followed by an exec() which is why it throws the NameError.

The code would run fine on a Python 3.x interpreter.

answered Aug 29, 2014 at 4:13

shaktimaan

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1 Comment

yang5 Over a year ago

My guess is raw_input() has been removed from python 3.x (It's not there in 3.4). But nice details. Thanks!

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