How to call a shell script from python code?

Question

How to call a shell script from python code?

Answer 1

The subprocess module will help you out.

Blatantly trivial example:

>>> import subprocess
>>> subprocess.call(['sh', './test.sh']) # Thanks @Jim Dennis for suggesting the []
0 
>>> 

Where test.sh is a simple shell script and 0 is its return value for this run.

Answer 2

There are some ways using os.popen() (deprecated) or the whole subprocess module, but this approach

import os
os.system(command)

is one of the easiest.

Answer 3

In case you want to pass some parameters to your shell script, you can use the method shlex.split():

import subprocess
import shlex
subprocess.call(shlex.split('./test.sh param1 param2'))

with test.sh in the same folder:

#!/bin/sh
echo $1
echo $2
exit 0

Outputs:

$ python test.py 
param1
param2

Answer 4

import os
import sys

Assuming test.sh is the shell script that you would want to execute

os.system("sh test.sh")

Answer 5

Use the subprocess module as mentioned above.

I use it like this:

subprocess.call(["notepad"])

Answer 6

I'm running python 3.5 and subprocess.call(['./test.sh']) doesn't work for me.

I give you three solutions depends on what you wanna do with the output.

1 - call script. You will see output in your terminal. output is a number.

import subprocess 
output = subprocess.call(['test.sh'])

2 - call and dump execution and error into string. You don't see execution in your terminal unless you print(stdout). Shell=True as argument in Popen doesn't work for me.

import subprocess
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

session = subprocess.Popen(['test.sh'], stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
stdout, stderr = session.communicate()

if stderr:
    raise Exception("Error "+str(stderr))

3 - call script and dump the echo commands of temp.txt in temp_file

import subprocess
temp_file = open("temp.txt",'w')
subprocess.call([executable], stdout=temp_file)
with open("temp.txt",'r') as file:
    output = file.read()
print(output)

Don't forget to take a look at the doc subprocess

Answer 7

I know this is an old question but I stumbled upon this recently and it ended up misguiding me since the Subprocess API as changed since python 3.5.

The new way to execute external scripts is with the run function, which runs the command described by args. Waits for command to complete, then returns a CompletedProcess instance.

import subprocess

subprocess.run(['./test.sh'])

Answer 8

In case the script is having multiple arguments

#!/usr/bin/python

import subprocess
output = subprocess.call(["./test.sh","xyz","1234"])
print output

Output will give the status code. If script runs successfully it will give 0 otherwise non-zero integer.

podname=xyz  serial=1234
0

Below is the test.sh shell script.

#!/bin/bash

podname=$1
serial=$2
echo "podname=$podname  serial=$serial"

Answer 9

Subprocess module is a good module to launch subprocesses. You can use it to call shell commands as this:

subprocess.call(["ls","-l"]);
#basic syntax
#subprocess.call(args, *)

You can see its documentation here.

If you have your script written in some .sh file or a long string, then you can use os.system module. It is fairly simple and easy to call:

import os
os.system("your command here")
# or
os.system('sh file.sh')

This command will run the script once, to completion, and block until it exits.

Answer 10

If your shell script file does not have execute permissions, do so in the following way.

import subprocess
subprocess.run(['/bin/bash', './test.sh'])

Answer 11

Subprocess is good but some people may like scriptine better. Scriptine has more high-level set of methods like shell.call(args), path.rename(new_name) and path.move(src,dst). Scriptine is based on subprocess and others.

Two drawbacks of scriptine:

• Current documentation level would be more comprehensive even though it is sufficient.
• Unlike subprocess, scriptine package is currently not installed by default.

Answer 12

In order to run shell script in python script and to run it from particular path in ubuntu, use below ;

import subprocess

a= subprocess.call(['./dnstest.sh'], cwd = "/home/test") 

print(a)

Where CWD is current working directory

Below will not work in Ubuntu ; here we need to remove 'sh'

subprocess.call(['sh' ,'./dnstest.sh'], cwd = "/home/test")

Answer 13

Using @Manoj-Govindan answer, I found that I could run simple shell scripts from python, but the script I was desperately trying to run would fail with the error

Syntax error: "(" unexpected

I changed the first argument from 'sh' to 'bash', and viola! Suddenly it executed.

subprocess.call(['bash', './test.sh'])

Answer 14

Please Try the following codes :

Import Execute 

Execute("zbx_control.sh")