Question

Trying to execute shell command in background using pythons commands module

>>>import commands
>>>output = commands.getstatusoutput("find / > tmp.txt &")
   sh: Syntax error: ";" unexpected

Can anyone explain what is wrong with the syntax ? How should it be executed then ?

Tazim.

Answer 1

According to the getstatusoutput documentation, commands.getstatusoutput(cmd) is executed as

{ cmd  ; } 2>&1

so your command is run as if it was

{ find / > tmp.txt & ; } 2 >& 1

and the ; is not valid after the & in such a command.

You should use the subprocess module to simulate the old-style os.spawn commands.

Try

subprocess.Popen("find / > tmp.txt", shell=True)