output from external commands

[James Colannino]

Hey everyone.  First off, I'm new to the list.  I had had a little bit 
of experience with Perl before discovering Python.  The more Python I 
learn, the more I love it :)  I just have a quick question to ask.  I 
know that this is probably a simple question, but I've been googling 
around, and partly because I'm not sure exactly what to search for, I've 
been unsuccessful at finding an answer.  What I'd like to do is be able 
to take the output of an external command and assign it as an array of 
strings.  So, for example, in Perl I could do something like:

@files = `ls`;

So I guess I'm looking for something similiar to the backticks in Perl.  
Forgive me if I've asked something that's a bit basic for this list.  
Any help would be greatly appreciated :)  Thanks very much in advance.

James

-- 
My blog: http://www.crazydrclaw.com/
My homepage: http://james.colannino.org/