Yurttas/PL/SL/python/docs/core-python-programming/doc/20/lib/module-commands.html
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8.18 commands -- Utilities for running commands
Availability: Unix.
The commands module contains wrapper functions for os.popen() which take a system command as a string and return any output generated by the command and, optionally, the exit status.
The commands module defines the following functions:
- getstatusoutput (cmd)
- Execute the string cmd in a shell with os.popen() and return a 2-tuple
(status, output). cmd is actually run as{ cmd ; } 2>&1, so that the returned output will contain output or error messages. A trailing newline is stripped from the output. The exit status for the command can be interpreted according to the rules for the C function wait().
- getoutput (cmd)
- Like getstatusoutput(), except the exit status is ignored and the return value is a string containing the command's output.
- getstatus (file)
- Return the output of "ls -ld file" as a string. This function uses the getoutput() function, and properly escapes backslashes and dollar signs in the argument.
Example:
>>> import commands
>>> commands.getstatusoutput('ls /bin/ls')
(0, '/bin/ls')
>>> commands.getstatusoutput('cat /bin/junk')
(256, 'cat: /bin/junk: No such file or directory')
>>> commands.getstatusoutput('/bin/junk')
(256, 'sh: /bin/junk: not found')
>>> commands.getoutput('ls /bin/ls')
'/bin/ls'
>>> commands.getstatus('/bin/ls')
'-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 13352 Oct 14 1994 /bin/ls'
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