Trying to run an external program

[Brant Sears]

Hi. I'm new to Python and I am trying to use the latest release (2.5)  
on Windows XP.

What I want to do is execute a program and have the results of the  
execution assigned to a variable. According to the documentation the  
way to do this is as follows:

import commands
x = commands.getstatusoutput('dir')

This should assign "x" to be the output of the command "dir".  
However, when I run this (or any other command), x ends up being:

(1, "'{' is not recognized as an internal or external command, 
\noperable program or batch file.")

 From looking through the documentation, I'm believing that the  
implementation of commands.getstatusoutput is actually some multi- 
step thing that starts with issuing the bracket character that is  
being choked on. This leads me to believe that Python or perhaps just  
the commands module is not setup correctly on my computer.

I installed Python using the Python2-5.msi link that I found at:
http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.5/

I left everything the default during installation, so Python was  
installed to C:\Python25. The only other thing I did was add this  
PATH variable on my computer.

Any ideas on what I might do to troubleshoot this?

Thanks!

Brant Sears