Why is ogr2ogr trying to open the app it's being run from?

Question

I'm trying to write some script using the ogr2ogr function in python:

convertstring = 'ogr2ogr -f r"GeoJSON" r"Output.GeoJson" -select * -where "layer = building" r"' + filepath+'"'
os.system(convertstring)

but I keep getting this error:

FAILURE: Unable to open datasource `myApp.py' with the following drivers.

This is a little odd - myApp.py is the app that I'm running so there is no need to open it, and I'm not asking it to open it. Any help really appreciated.

Answer 1

os.system() uses a shell to execute the command, so that asterisk gets expanded to all the filenames in the current working directory.

Unrelated to that, I strongly doubt that all those r" thingies do what you want them to do (whatever that is!).

You might be better off using subprocess.run().