[DOC-SIG] Re: [PYTHON DOC-SIG] contributing documentation

[Fred L. Drake]

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Sue,
  I've added libcommands.tex and your patches to the Python
development tree; they'll be in the next distribution.  I did have to
make a couple of minor changes to the LaTeX, but they'd be hard to
have done without knowing LaTeX yourself, and I'm happy to make them.
(It's a lot easier checking someone else's documentation than starting
from scratch as well!)
  I've attached the finished libcommands.tex as it appears in the
sources.
  Thanks!


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.
fdrake@cnri.reston.va.us
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
1895 Preston White Drive
Reston, VA    20191-5434


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\section{Standard module \sectcode{commands}}	% If implemented in Python
\stmodindex{commands}

The \code{commands} module contains wrapper functions for \code{os.popen()} 
which take a system command as a string and return any output generated by 
the command, and optionally, the exit status.

The \code{commands} module is only usable on systems which support 
\code{popen()} (currently \UNIX{}).

The \code{commands} module defines the following functions:

\renewcommand{\indexsubitem}{(in module commands)}
\begin{funcdesc}{getstatusoutput}{cmd}
Execute the string \var{cmd} in a shell with \code{os.popen()} and return
a 2-tuple (status, output).  \var{cmd} is actually run as
\samp{\{\ cmd \} ; 2$>$\$1}, so that the returned output will contain output
or error messages. A trailing newline is stripped from the output.
The exit status for the  command can be interpreted according to the
rules for the \C{} function \code{wait()}.  
\end{funcdesc}

\begin{funcdesc}{getoutput}{cmd}
Like \code{getstatusoutput()}, except the exit status is ignored and
the return value is a string containing the command's output.  
\end{funcdesc}

\begin{funcdesc}{getstatus}{file}
Return the output of \samp{ls -ld \var{file}} as a string.  This
function uses the \code{getoutput()} function, and properly escapes
backslashes and dollar signs in the argument.
\end{funcdesc}

Example:

\begin{verbatim}
>>> import commands
>>> commands.getstatusoutput('ls /bin/ls')
(0, '/bin/ls')
>>> commands.getstatusoutput('cat /bin/junk')
(256, 'cat: /bin/junk: No such file or directory')
>>> commands.getstatusoutput('/bin/junk')
(256, 'sh: /bin/junk: not found')
>>> commands.getoutput('ls /bin/ls')
'/bin/ls'
>>> commands.getstatus('/bin/ls')
'-rwxr-xr-x  1 root        13352 Oct 14  1994 /bin/ls'
\end{verbatim}

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