mike wrote: ... > unix pipes and filters, e.g. "ls *.txt | grep -v old | wc -l". > > I know I can use "os.system()" to invoke system calls, but I don't ... > So what is an easy one-liner way to store stdout of a sytem-call to a > variable? thevar = os.popen('ls *.txt | grep -v old | wc -l').read() Alex