Python Script execute commands in Terminal

I read this somewhere a while ago but cant seem to find it. I am trying to find a command that will execute commands in the terminal and then output the result.

For example: the script will be:

command 'ls -l'

It will out the result of running that command in the terminal

Solution 1:

There are several ways to do this:

A simple way is using the os module:

import os
os.system("ls -l")

More complex things can be achieved with the subprocess module: for example:

import subprocess
test = subprocess.Popen(["ping","-W","2","-c", "1", "192.168.1.70"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
output = test.communicate()[0]

Solution 2:

I prefer usage of subprocess module:

from subprocess import call
call(["ls", "-l"])

Reason is that if you want to pass some variable in the script this gives very easy way for example take the following part of the code

abc = a.c
call(["vim", abc])

Solution 3:

• Custom standard input for python subprocess

In fact any question on subprocess will be a good read

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/subprocess