os.system output

[gkiffney]

If  you're on Unix, you can use 'commands'.
    import commands
    res = commands.getoutput('ls')

and res will be a long string with the output of 'ls'.
To make a list out of res, you'd just do
    import string
    dirlist = string.split(res, '\n')

"Jonathan Soons" <jsoons at juilliard.edu> wrote in message
news:mailman.985192771.32528.python-list at python.org...
> I am trying to save the output of
>
> >>>dirs = os.system('ls')
>
> into a variable but I do not need any output to
> the screen (altho it doesn't hurt). How do I
> go about this?
> My fat book only explains how to get output to the screen.
>
> I could do
>
> >>>os.system('ls > file')
> >>>f = open('file')
> >>>dirs = f.readlines()
>
> but it looks crude. Is there a better way?
>