os.system question

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:07:40 -0400, Kevin Walzer wrote:

>>>> import os
>  >>> foo = os.system('whoami')
> kevin
>  >>> print foo
> 0
>  >>>
>  >>>
> The standard output of the system command 'whoami' is my login name. Yet
> the value of the 'foo' object is '0,' not 'kevin.' How can I get the
> value of 'kevin' associated with foo?


That's because os.system captures the return code of the system call, 
which is 0 in this case because whoami succeeded. Meanwhile whoami 
printed its result to standard output, as normal.

What you want is os.popen('whoami', 'r').read()

Also look at the popen2 module.



-- 
Steven