Calling external program from within python

[Terry Reedy]

Michael Tobis wrote:

> For some reason os.popen is deprecated in favor of the more verbose
> subprocess.Popen, but this will work for a while.

As explained in
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0324/
subprocess consolidated replaced several modules and functions (popen*, 
system, spawn*, ???)with better security, exception handling, and 
flexibility.  The deprecated modules are gone in 3.0, so the OP might 
want to start with subprocess now.