Python Doc Problem Example: os.system

[Robert Wierschke]

Xah Lee schrieb:
> Python Doc Problem Example: os.system
> 
> Xah Lee, 2005-09
> 
> today i'm trying to use Python to call shell commands. e.g. in Perl
> something like
> 
> output=qx(ls)
> 
> in Python i quickly located the the function due to its
> well-named-ness:
> 
> import os
> os.system("ls")
> 
> 
> however, according to the doc
> http://www.python.org/doc/2.4/lib/os-process.html the os.system()
> returns some esoteric unix thing, not the command output. The doc
> doesn't say how to get the output of the command.
> 

The os.popen(...) function will return a file like object, so you can 
use a read() - method of these object to get the called programms output.

hope that helps - I' m very new to python

The documentation may be not well for all circumstances but the fine 
thing is: the documentation is part of the code itself - inform of the 
docstrings - and this is a very good approach. The bad thing is the 
person who wrote the docstring was documenting his/her own code and not 
code of other programmers.