Simple python command to capture shell execution output?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Running shell command from python and capturing the output

When I want to capture shell execution output, I do this.

declare TAGNAME=`git describe --tags`

Simple. I looked for this in Python, but most of them looks very complex. What's the simplest way to do this? Yeah I know I can make a function, but I want to know pre-defined function if it is exist.

tagname = theFunc('git describe --tags')

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 22 '12 at 13:29

6

Try:

>>> import subprocess
>>> tagname = subprocess.check_output('git describe --tags'.split())

answered Aug 22 '12 at 13:29

Konrad Hałas

4,844
3
18
18

It was required to call `.strip('\n')` for returned string. – eonil Aug 22 '12 at 13:44
@Eonil Why call `.strip('\n')`? Does it really matter to have a `\n`? – quantum Aug 22 '12 at 14:23
@xiaomao Yeah. Because I will pass the string to another shell command. It's really wonderful that you can be fine with unexpected result. – eonil Aug 22 '12 at 14:30

hochl · Answer 2 · 2012-08-22T13:38:34.237

1

You should take a look at the subprocess module. You can capture the output of a command with it as well. There are many examples in the manual page how the module is used.

Example:

output=subprocess.Popen(["ps", "aux"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
    stderr=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()

The result is a tuple with stdout and stderr that was captured from the command.

edited Aug 22 '12 at 13:38

answered Aug 22 '12 at 13:31

hochl

12,524
10
53
87

Simple python command to capture shell execution output?

2 Answers2