Error 'not subscriptable' when calling the function

Question

I have the function below that copies a file in a directory and recreate it in the directory where the function is called. When I am running the code part by part in ipython, it is working fine. However, when I execute it as a function it is giving me the following error:

---> 17     shutil.copy2(filein[0], os.path.join(dir,'template.in'))

TypeError: 'type' object is not subscriptable

Here is the function

import os
import shutil
from find import find

def recreatefiles(filedir):
    currdir = os.getcwd() # get current directory
    dirname = 'maindir'
    dir = os.path.join(currdir,dirname)
    if not os.path.exists(dir):
        os.makedirs(dir)

    #Copy .in files and create a template
    filein = find('*.in',filedir) # find is a function created

    shutil.copy2(filein[0], os.path.join(dir,'template.in'))

Any ideas about the error? Thanks

EDIT: Here is the code for find

import os, fnmatch
def find(pattern, path):
    result = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        for name in files:
            if fnmatch.fnmatch(name, pattern):
                if not name.startswith('.'):
                    result.append(os.path.join(root, name))
    return result

EDIT2: Output of filein from ipython

  [1]: filein
  [2]: ['/home/Projects/test.in']

Basically, there is just one file. I used filein[0] in shutil.copy2 to remove the square brackets

Answer 1

I don't see how you can possibly get 'type' object is not subscriptable with this code (as a matter of fact, I can successfully run it on my computer and have it copy one file).

This suggests that the code you're running isn't the code that you think you're running.

I would do two things:

1. make sure that the code is exactly as it appears in your question;
2. since you appear to be running this in an interactive shell, make sure you close and restart ipython (to eliminate the possibility that you're accidentally calling an older version of find() that got imported earlier).

As a side note, I'd explicitly handle the case where filein is empty: the current code would raise an exception (list index out of range).

Answer 2

use

import pdb
pdb.pm()

just after getting the exception to be able to pinpoint exactly which line of code in which file triggers the error, and what variable is a type being subscripted.