Running shell commands within python interpreter

Question

Is there a simple method for calling shell command line arguments (like ls or pwd) from within python interpreter?

Answer 1

In plain python, you need to use something along the lines of this:

from subprocess import check_output
check_output("ls", shell=True)

In IPython, you can run either of those commands or a general shell command by starting off with !. For example

! echo "Hello, world!" > /tmp/Hello.txt

If you're using python interactively, you would almost certainly be happier with IPython.

Answer 2

If you meant to use the Python shell interactively while being able to call commands (ls, pwd, ...) check out iPython.