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Reference
ActivePython 2.4
Python Documentation
Library Reference
8. Unix Specific Services
8.1 posix -- The most common POSIX system calls
8.2 pwd -- The password database
8.3 grp -- The group database
8.4 crypt -- Function to check Unix passwords
8.5 dl -- Call C functions in shared objects
8.6 dbm -- Simple ``database'' interface
8.7 gdbm -- GNU's reinterpretation of dbm
8.8 termios -- POSIX style tty control
8.9 tty -- Terminal control functions
8.10 pty -- Pseudo-terminal utilities
8.11 fcntl -- The fcntl() and ioctl() system calls
8.12 pipes -- Interface to shell pipelines
8.13 posixfile -- File-like objects with locking support
8.14 resource -- Resource usage information
8.15 nis -- Interface to Sun's NIS (Yellow Pages)
8.16 syslog -- Unix syslog library routines
8.17 commands -- Utilities for running commands

MyASPN >> Reference >> ActivePython 2.4 >> Python Documentation >> Library Reference >> 8. Unix Specific Services
ActivePython 2.4 documentation

8.17 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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