Running windows shell commands with python
Question:
How can we interact with OS shell using Python ?
I want to run windows cmd commands via python. How can it be achieved ?
Answers:
You would use the os module system method.
You just put in the string form of the command, the return value is the windows enrivonment variable COMSPEC
For example:
os.system(‘python’) opens up the windows command prompt and runs the python interpreter
The newer subprocess.check_output
and similar commands are supposed to replace os.system
. See this page for details. While I can’t test this on Windows (because I don’t have access to any Windows machines), the following should work:
from subprocess import check_output
check_output("dir C:", shell=True)
check_output
returns a string of the output from your command. Alternatively, subprocess.call
just runs the command and returns the status of the command (usually 0 if everything is okay).
Also note that, in python 3, that string output is now bytes
output. If you want to change this into a string, you need something like
from subprocess import check_output
check_output("dir C:", shell=True).decode()
If necessary, you can tell it the kind of encoding your program outputs. The default is utf-8
, which typically works fine, but other standard options are here.
Also note that @bluescorpion says in the comments that Windows 10 needs a trailing backslash, as in check_output("dir C:\", shell=True)
. The double backslash is needed because
is a special character in python, so it has to be escaped. (Also note that even prefixing the string with r
doesn’t help if
is the very last character of the string — r"dir C:"
is a syntax error, though r"dir C: "
is not.)
import subprocess
result = []
win_cmd = 'ipconfig'(curr_user,filename,ip_address)
process = subprocess.Popen(win_cmd,
shell=True,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE )
for line in process.stdout:
print line
result.append(line)
errcode = process.returncode
for line in result:
print line
Refactoring of @srini-beerge’s answer which gets the output and the return code
import subprocess
def run_win_cmd(cmd):
result = []
process = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
shell=True,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in process.stdout:
result.append(line)
errcode = process.returncode
for line in result:
print(line)
if errcode is not None:
raise Exception('cmd %s failed, see above for details', cmd)
You can use the subprocess
package with the code as below:
import subprocess
cmdCommand = "python test.py" #specify your cmd command
process = subprocess.Popen(cmdCommand.split(), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
output, error = process.communicate()
print output
Simple Import os package and run below command.
import os
os.system("python test.py")
How can we interact with OS shell using Python ?
I want to run windows cmd commands via python. How can it be achieved ?
You would use the os module system method.
You just put in the string form of the command, the return value is the windows enrivonment variable COMSPEC
For example:
os.system(‘python’) opens up the windows command prompt and runs the python interpreter
The newer subprocess.check_output
and similar commands are supposed to replace os.system
. See this page for details. While I can’t test this on Windows (because I don’t have access to any Windows machines), the following should work:
from subprocess import check_output
check_output("dir C:", shell=True)
check_output
returns a string of the output from your command. Alternatively, subprocess.call
just runs the command and returns the status of the command (usually 0 if everything is okay).
Also note that, in python 3, that string output is now bytes
output. If you want to change this into a string, you need something like
from subprocess import check_output
check_output("dir C:", shell=True).decode()
If necessary, you can tell it the kind of encoding your program outputs. The default is utf-8
, which typically works fine, but other standard options are here.
Also note that @bluescorpion says in the comments that Windows 10 needs a trailing backslash, as in check_output("dir C:\", shell=True)
. The double backslash is needed because is a special character in python, so it has to be escaped. (Also note that even prefixing the string with
r
doesn’t help if is the very last character of the string —
r"dir C:"
is a syntax error, though r"dir C: "
is not.)
import subprocess
result = []
win_cmd = 'ipconfig'(curr_user,filename,ip_address)
process = subprocess.Popen(win_cmd,
shell=True,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE )
for line in process.stdout:
print line
result.append(line)
errcode = process.returncode
for line in result:
print line
Refactoring of @srini-beerge’s answer which gets the output and the return code
import subprocess
def run_win_cmd(cmd):
result = []
process = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
shell=True,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in process.stdout:
result.append(line)
errcode = process.returncode
for line in result:
print(line)
if errcode is not None:
raise Exception('cmd %s failed, see above for details', cmd)
You can use the subprocess
package with the code as below:
import subprocess
cmdCommand = "python test.py" #specify your cmd command
process = subprocess.Popen(cmdCommand.split(), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
output, error = process.communicate()
print output
Simple Import os package and run below command.
import os
os.system("python test.py")