How to call an external command

Question

How do you call an external command (as if I'd typed it at the Unix shell or Windows command prompt) from within a Python script?

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

Look at the subprocess module in the standard library:

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

The advantage of subprocess vs. system is that it is more flexible (you can get the stdout, stderr, the "real" status code, better error handling, etc...).