Question

Assume I have a file at http://mysite.com/myscript.sh that contains:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Hello $1"

From the command line, I can execute my script (without downloading it) using the following command:

bash <(curl -s http://mysite.com/myscript.sh) World

Now, instead of executing the above command from the command line, I want to execute it from a python script. I tried doing the following:

import os
os.system('bash <(curl -s http://mysite.com/myscript.sh) World')

…but I get the following error:

sh: -c: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `(‘

How do I make this execute correctly in python?

Answer 1

Evidently, os.system runs its command through /bin/sh, which usually causes whichever shell it’s linked to to drop to a compatibility mode that doesn’t include the <(...) construction. You can get around it by either storing the result in a temporary file or using another level of shell. Ugly, but it works.

os.system('bash -c "bash <(curl -s http://mysite.com/myscript.sh) World"')