How to execute a program or call a system command from Python?

Question

How can we call an external command from inside a Python script?

Answer 1

For that case, you need to use the subprocess module in the standard library:

import subprocess

subprocess.run(["ls", "-l"])

The benefit of the subprocess.run over os.system is that it is more manageable(you can get the stdout, stderr, the "real" status code, better error handling, etc...).

On Python 3.4 and earlier, use subprocess.call instead of .run:

subprocess.call(["ls", "-l"])

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