Python string extraction from Subprocess

Question

Hi I am currently coding a random program at the moment, that effectively needs to see my MAC address.

This is what I have at the moment:

import subprocess

def get_mac():

    mac_addr = subprocess.check_output(["ifconfig", "wlan0"])

Output from where i want the HWaddr extracted:

ifconfig wlan0
wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1b:11:1e:97:29  
          inet addr:10.1.1.6  Bcast:10.1.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0                                                                                                                  
          inet6 addr: fe80::21b:11ff:fe1e:9729/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:91394 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:58894 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:115550581 (115.5 MB)  TX bytes:6097577 (6.0 MB)

So now I have the whereabouts of the MAC, but how would I extract it in that exact format? I looked around and couldn't fine anything other than URL extractions and such.

All I could find were re.search hich doesnt help me at all as I need to find a different MAC possible every time. Thanks

EDIT:

Sorry it's 5:30 and I am a bit tired. I realised I didnt even finish my question sorry. Not even the code :/ Edited now

Please be more specific. Show the output of the command that you are calling, and then show what you want to extract. Otherwise we must guess what you want. — SethMMorton, Jun 01 '13 at 19:22

Stian Ellingsen · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-02T00:29:18.080

0

If you're on linux, you may try this to get the MAC address:

iface = 'wlan0'
mac_addr = open('/sys/class/net/%s/address' % iface).read().rstrip()

For general string extraction, you may use the re module:

import subprocess, re

RE_MAC = re.compile(r'\bHWaddr\s+(((?(2):|)[\dA-Fa-f]{2}){6})\b')
match = RE_MAC.search(subprocess.check_output(["ifconfig", "wlan0"]))
if match:
    mac_addr = match.group(1)

Note that my version of ifconfig (net-tools 1.60) uses ether rather than HWaddr, illustrating one problem of parsing the output of such programs.

edited Jun 02 '13 at 00:29

answered Jun 01 '13 at 23:49

Stian Ellingsen

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Thanks for the reply. I know it probably wasn't the best way to do it but I just used re.findall(regex, match) The regex ws something like "..[:]..[:]"... etc. – Jake Poulter Jun 02 '13 at 03:51

Python string extraction from Subprocess

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