#Maya 2017 terminal olcation os x how to#

In order to retrieve the exit code of the command executed, you must use the close() method of the file object. Thus, for example 'rb' will produce a readable binary file object. Appending a 'b' to the mode will open the file in binary mode.

The argument mode defines whether or not this output file is readable ('r') or writable ('w'). Here the command parameter is what you'll be executing, and its output will be available via an open file. The syntax is as follows: os.popen(command]) The output is an open file that can be accessed by other programs. This pipe allows the command to send its output to another command. The os.popen method opens a pipe from a command. This could be calling another executable, like your own compiled C++ program, or a shell command like ls or mkdir. The goal of each of these methods is to be able to call other programs from your Python code. These methods I'm referring to are: popen, popen2, popen3, and popen4, all of which are described in the following sections. The os module offers four different methods that allows us to interact with the operating system (just like you would with the command line) and create a pipe to other commands.

#Maya 2017 terminal olcation os x how to#

Hopefully by the end of this article you'll have a better understanding of how to call external commands from Python code and which method you should use to do it.įirst up is the older os.popen* methods. Throughout this article we'll talk about the various os and subprocess methods, how to use them, how they're different from each other, on what version of Python they should be used, and even how to convert the older commands to the newer ones.

Python 2 has several methods in the os module, which are now deprecated and replaced by the subprocess module, which is the preferred option in Python 3. However, the methods are different for Python 2 and 3. Python offers several options to run external processes and interact with the operating system.