[Tutor] Running external commands from Python

[Randy Kao]

Thanks for the great and quick feedback from everyone!

That definitely clears things up.

-Randy

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info>wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 08:46:17 am Randy Kao wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm a newbie to Python (switching from Perl) and had a question about
> > the best way to run external commands in Python.
> [...]
> > through: os.popen, os.popen2, os.popen3, os.system,
> > commands.getoutput()
>
>
> os.system is the oldest way, and it's pretty much obsolete. Only use it
> for quick-and-dirty scripts when you're too lazy to do the right thing
> and don't care who knows it. It doesn't capture either stdin or stdout,
> only the return value.
>
> os.popen, popen2 and popen3 are probably closer to what you're used to
> in Perl. They basically differ in how many file handles they return:
>
> popen returns the external command's stdout as a file handle.
> popen2 returns (stdin, stdout)
> popen3 returns (stdin, stdout, stderr)
>
> The commands module is meant as an easier to use front end to the popen*
> functions, for times where popen* are too much and system is too
> little. If all you want is the output (stdout + stderr) of an external
> command:
>
> import commands
> output = commands.getoutput('ls -l foo*')
>
> will do the trick.
>
>
> --
> Steven D'Aprano
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