Redirecting console output to a Python string

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How can I capture the stdout output of a child process?

I'm running a cat-like program in bash from Python:

   import os

   os.system('cat foo.txt')

How do I get the output of the shell command back in the Python script, something like:

   s = somefunction('cat foo.txt')

?

UPD: Here is a related thread.

dupe... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/923079/subprocess-and-stdout/923108 — Paolo Bergantino, Jun 15 '09 at 07:53

score 17 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 15 '09 at 07:49

17

Use the subprocess module.

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

(stdout, stderr) = Popen(["cat","foo.txt"], stdout=PIPE).communicate()
print stdout

answered Jun 15 '09 at 07:49

ismail

1 Answers1