[Tutor] executing a program and retrieving it's output

[Daniel Yoo]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Ben Beuchler wrote:

> I'm familiar with using os.popen('command') to execute a command and
> retrieve it's output. However, I rather dreadfully miss being able to do
> this in Perl:
> 
> $myvariable = `/path/to/my/program`
> 
> Is there an easy equivalent in Python? 

The most direct equivalent I can think to do this would be:

###
  myvariable = os.popen('/path/to/my/program').read()
###

However, remember, you can write a definition to make this easy on
yourself.

###
  def suckExec(program_name):
    return os.popen(program_name).read()
###

Afterwards, you should be able to just say:

###
  myvariable = suckExec('/path/to/my/program')
###

For example:

>>> suckExec('ls')
'mail\012nsmail\012'          # (Just did a reinstall.)


True, it is a little longer to write.  But it reads so beautifully...
*grin* Hope this helps!