How Can I Efficiently Store Subprocess Output as a String in Python?

Storing Subprocess Output in a String

When executing system calls in Python, storing the results in a string for further manipulation becomes crucial. This article explores how to achieve this effectively using subprocess.Popen in Python.

Consider the example below:

import subprocess

# Create a Popen object to execute the ntpq command
p2 = subprocess.Popen("ntpq -p")

To store the output of this command in a string, there are two primary approaches:

Method 1: subprocess.check_output (Python 2.7 or Python 3)

This function combines Popen with communication handling to return the stdout output as a string.

from subprocess import check_output

# Execute the command and store the output in a string
out = check_output(["ntpq", "-p"])

Method 2: communicate (Python 2.4-2.6)

For older Python versions, the communicate method is utilized.

import subprocess

# Create a Popen object with stdout connected to a pipe
p = subprocess.Popen(["ntpq", "-p"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

# Read the stdout output and store it in a string
out, err = p.communicate()

Note that the command should be provided as a list, as Popen doesn't invoke the shell.

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