How do I call an external command within Python as if I had typed it in a shell or command prompt?
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Answer
Use the subprocess
module in the standard library:
import subprocess subprocess.run(["ls", "-l"])
The advantage of subprocess.run
over os.system
is that it is more flexible (you can get the stdout
, stderr
, the “real” status code, better error handling, etc…).
Even the documentation for os.system
recommends using subprocess
instead:
The
subprocess
module provides more powerful facilities for spawning new processes and retrieving their results; using that module is preferable to using this function. See the Replacing Older Functions with the subprocess Module section in thesubprocess
documentation for some helpful recipes.
On Python 3.4 and earlier, use subprocess.call
instead of .run
:
subprocess.call(["ls", "-l"])