[Tutor] Pipe variable to external command

[Jeffrey Rice]

Hi,
I am working on getting comfortable with Python, and am trying to rewrite 
some of my old (clumsy) bash scripts into python.

I am having a little problem with how to pipe a variable's contents to an 
external command.  Essentially, I have a variable that contains the 
contents of a variable that I want to feed to a series of external commands 
(clamav and spamassassin).

EMAIL contains the full email message, and CLAMAV contains the path to the 
clamscan bin (and necessary flags).  I have tested this on the command line 
and it works (so I know the command syntax is correct), but in my python 
script it is clear that nothing is getting piped to the scanner.

CLAMAV_h= os.popen(CLAMAV, 'w')
CLAMAV_h.write(EMAIL)
CLAM_RESULT=CLAMAV_h.close()
print CLAM_RESULT

I can make this work by writing to a temp file and scanning that, but I 
would like to avoid having to write to and read from a temp file at every 
step.  I expect I am making a very basic error, stemming from my tackling a 
(perhaps?) more advanced problem at this early stage.  But one can only get 
so far with "Hello World"....

Many thanks,

Jeff


*       *       *       *       *       *       *
Jeffrey Rice    ||     jeffrice at finity.org      ||  www.finity.org