Question

I can execute a terminal command using os.system() but I want to capture the output of this command. How can I do this?

Answer 1

>>> import subprocess
>>> cmd = [ 'echo', 'arg1', 'arg2' ]
>>> output = subprocess.Popen( cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE ).communicate()[0]
>>> print(output)
arg1 arg2

There is a bug in using of the subprocess.PIPE. For the huge output use this:

import subprocess
import tempfile

with tempfile.TemporaryFile() as tempf:
    proc = subprocess.Popen(['echo', 'a', 'b'], stdout=tempf)
    proc.wait()
    tempf.seek(0)
    print(tempf.read())