*** Spam *** Re: commands.getstatusoutput result is not command line exit value!!!

[Steve Holden]

A famous Holden typo - it should have been "12 * 256 == 3072", but 
really it shouldn't have been beyond you to perform a division of 3072 
by 12 (given that you already knew the number 12 was potentially involved).

Basically the value you want is shifted up 8 bits. Perhaps I should more 
understandably have said:

   12 << 8 == 3072

regards
  Steve

Hari Sekhon wrote:
> I don't quite understand what you are saying here:
> 
> 2 * 256 is 512,
> 2 ** 256 is some extremely large number.
> 
> 2**12 is 4096.
> 
> So how does 3072 factor into this?
> 
> Could you explain what you mean by "the error in the top half of a 
> sixteen-bit value"?
> 
> This makes no sense to me at this moment.
> 
> -h
> 
> Hari Sekhon
> 
> 
> 
> Steve Holden wrote:
> 
>>Hari Sekhon wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>I'm running a command like
>>>
>>>import commands
>>>result = commands.getstatusoutput('somecommand')
>>>print result[0]
>>>3072
>>>
>>>
>>>However, this exit code made no sense so I ran it manually from the 
>>>command line in bash on my linux server and it gives the exit code as 
>>>12, not this weird 3072 number.
>>>
>>>So I tried os.system('somecommand') in the interactive python shell and 
>>>it too returned the same result for the exit code as the unix shell, 12, 
>>>but re-running the commands.getstatusoutput() with the exact same 
>>>command still gave 3072.
>>>
>>>
>>>Is commands.getstatusoutput() broken or something?
>>>
>>>
>>>-h
>>>
>>>    
>>>
>>No, it's just returning the error code in the top half of a sixteen-bit 
>>value. You will notice that 3072 == 2 * 256.
>>
>>That's always been the way the Unix return code has been returned 
>>programattically, but the shell shifts it down to make it more usab;e.
>>
>>regards
>>  Steve
>>  
>>


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