Running python script with system arguments from applescript

Question

Hi,
I am trying to run a python code from within applescript. A string should be passed as an argument to the python script, i.e. from the terminal, I would do the following
cd /Users/thatsme/Library/Scripts/myfolder
python my_python_file.py abcdefg
There are two ways I figure I could do this in applescript. "abcdefg" are contained in the variable strNote
a) directly:
do shell script "cd /Users/thatsme/Library/Scripts/myfolder; python my_python_file.py " & strNote
b) calling Terminal
tell application "Terminal"
  activate
          do script "cd /Users/claushaslauer/Library/Scripts/OO_latex; python my_python_file.py " & strNote
end tell
I would prefer option a) as I don't really want to have Terminal windows popping up. The strange thing is, that I see in the applescript results window the result of the print statements in the python script, but no output is generated (the python script contains a few os.system() commands.
Option b) does what it is supposed to be doing, however, applescript does not wait until the script is finished running.
Why does option a) nor work, and what do I need to change to make it work?

Answer 1

Thank you guys for your help, this is really weird.
Here is my full applescript
set strNoteQ to "1+1=2"
(* for whatever reason, this does not work *)
do shell script "cd /Users/claushaslauer/Library/Scripts/OO_latex; python create_latex_pdf.py " & strNoteQ
Below is my python skript.
When I call it as
     python create_latex_pdf.py 1+1=2
it creates a wonderful pdf.
With the applescript above, it prints the print statements, it also generates the latex file temp.tex -- correctly, so I assume the string in this example is ok.
However, it does not execute the latex related commands (the three os.system calls)
Is it not a good idea / not possible to execute os.system in a python script that is called from applescript? <sorry if I had brought all the attention to the string issue>
here is the python script:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys
import os
import datetime
import time
def main():
    str_latex_note = sys.argv[1]
    print "%s" %  str_latex_note
    preamble = """\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}
\pagestyle{empty}
\\begin{document}
{\huge
%s
\end{document}"""% (str_latex_note)
    ## write latex file
    cur_path = r'/Users/mypath/Library/Scripts/OO_latex'
    cur_file = "temp.tex"
    fobj = open(os.path.join(cur_path, cur_file), 'w')
    fobj.writelines(preamble)
    fobj.close()
    ## process latex file
    print cur_path
    os.chdir(cur_path)
    cmd = 'latex temp.tex'
    print cmd
    print "running latex"
    os.system(cmd)
    cmd2 = 'dvips -E -f -X 1200 -Y 1200 temp.dvi > temp.ps'
    print "running dvips"
    os.system(cmd2)
    cmd3 = 'epstopdf temp.ps'
    print "running epstopdf"
    os.system(cmd3)
    print "done!"
if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()