assigning value to shell variable using a function return value from Python

You can print your value in Python, like this:

print fooPy()

and in your shell script:

fooShell=$(python fooPy.py)

Be sure not to leave spaces around the = in the shell script.

In your Python code, you need to print the result.

import sys
def fooPy():
    return 10 # or whatever

if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.stdout.write("%s\n", fooPy())

Then in the shell, you can do:

fooShell=$(python fooPy.py) # note no space around the '='

Note that I added an if __name__ == '__main__' check in the Python code, to make sure that the printing is done only when your program is run from the command line, not when you import it from the Python interpreter.

I also used sys.stdout.write() instead of print, because

• print has different behavior in Python 2 and Python 3,
• in "real programs", one should use sys.stdout.write() instead of print anyway :-)

If you want the value from the Python sys.exit statement, it will be in the shell special variable $?.

$ var=$(foo.py)
$ returnval=$?
$ echo $var
Some string
$ echo returnval
10