Platforms: Unix
The commands module contains wrapper functions for os.popen() which take a system command as a string and return any output generated by the command and, optionally, the exit status.
The subprocess module provides more powerful facilities for spawning new processes and retrieving their results. Using the subprocess module is preferable to using the commands module.
Note
In Python 3.x, getstatus() and two undocumented functions (mk2arg() and mkarg()) have been removed. Also, getstatusoutput() and getoutput() have been moved to the subprocess module.
The commands module defines the following functions:
Return the output of ls -ld file as a string. This function uses the getoutput() function, and properly escapes backslashes and dollar signs in the argument.
Deprecated since version 2.6: This function is nonobvious and useless. The name is also misleading in the presence of getstatusoutput().
Example:
>>> import commands
>>> commands.getstatusoutput('ls /bin/ls')
(0, '/bin/ls')
>>> commands.getstatusoutput('cat /bin/junk')
(256, 'cat: /bin/junk: No such file or directory')
>>> commands.getstatusoutput('/bin/junk')
(256, 'sh: /bin/junk: not found')
>>> commands.getoutput('ls /bin/ls')
'/bin/ls'
>>> commands.getstatus('/bin/ls')
'-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 13352 Oct 14 1994 /bin/ls'
See also