Shell

A shell command will run in a subprocess within the Python process.

Resources

• subprocess module in the docs
• Python shell guide in Learn to Code.

Import

import subprocess

Run

cmd = "MY_COMMAND"

result = subprocess.run(
    cmd, 
    capture_output=True, 
    text=True, 
    shell=True
)

Capture output

output = subprocess.getstatusoutput(cmd)

Output will be a string.

e.g.

cmd = "git remote get-url origin"

subprocess.getstatusoutput(cmd)
# 'git@github.com:MichaelCurrin/shell-dev-setup.git'

Capture output and status code

exitcode, output = subprocess.getstatusoutput(cmd)

Exitcode will be an integer.

Output will be a string.

e.g.

cmd = "ls -l"
exitcode, output = subprocess.getstatusoutput(cmd)

exitcode
# 0

print(output)
# total 36
# drwxrwxr-x 5 michael michael 4096 Oct 16 21:14 bin
# drwxrwxr-x 4 michael michael 4096 Oct 16 21:14 configs
# ...