snip–><–snip

I have been using the commands module for quite some time, purely because it is simple to use.
Now that i have to go to writing code to work on windows, its time to start using the suproccess module. Also to make it easier for the other hard core programmers i will be working with to read my code.

Using the commands module to get the output of a command:

</code>

import commands
output = commands.getoutput('ls -lah /home/')
outputList = output.split('\n')

print outputList
["kym.watts","guest"]

<pre><code>

The command that is run by Popen, needs to be supplied to the command as a list, no spaces.

Using subproccess command:

</code>
<pre class="c:firstline[1]">import subprocess
output = subprocess.Popen(["ls","-lah","/home/"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
outputList = output.split('\n')

print outputList
["kym.watts","guest"]</pre>
<pre><code>

Im pretty sure that in a few months time i will have forgotten about this way of working.