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Calling a shell script from python

I have a python script that calls a shell scrips, that in turn calls a .exe called iv4_console. I need to print the stdout of iv4_console for debugging purposes. I used this:
Python:
import sys
import subprocess
var="rW015005000000"
proc = subprocess.Popen(["c.sh", var], shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
output = ''
for line in iter(proc.stdout.readline, ""):
print line
output += line
Shell:
start_dir=$PWD
release=$1
echo Release inside shell: $release
echo Directory: $start_dir
cd $start_dir
cd ../../iv_system4/ports/visualC12/Debug
echo Debug dir: $PWD
./iv4_console.exe ../embedded/LUA/analysis/verbose-udp-toxml.lua ../../../../../logs/$release/VASP_DUN722_20160307_Krk_Krk_113048_092_1_$release.dvl &>../../../../FCW/ObjectDetectionTest/VASP_DUN722_20160307_Krk_Krk_113048_092_1_$release.xml
./iv4_console.exe ../embedded/LUA/analysis/verbose-udp-toxml.lua ../../../../../logs/$release/VASP_FL140_20170104_C60_Checkout_afterIC_162557_001_$release.dvl &>../../../../FCW/ObjectDetectionTest/VASP_FL140_20170104_C60_Checkout_afterIC_162557_001_$release.xml
exit
But this didn't work, it prints nothing. What do you think?

See my comment, best approach (i.m.o) would be to just use python only.
However, in answer of your question, try:
import sys
import subprocess
var="rW015005000000"
proc = subprocess.Popen(["/bin/bash", "/full/path/to/c.sh"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
# Best to always avoid shell=True because of security vulnerabilities.
proc.wait() # To make sure the shell script does not continue running indefinitely in the background
output, errors = proc.communicate()
print(output.decode())
# Since subprocess.communicate() returns a bytes-string, you can use .decode() to print the actual output as a string.

You can use
import subprocess
subprocess.call(['./c.sh'])
to call the shell script in python file
or
import subprocess
import shlex
subprocess.call(shlex.split('./c.sh var'))

How to avoid passing shell constructs to executable using Popen

I am trying to call an executable called foo, and pass it some command line arguments. An external script calls into the executable and uses the following command:
./main/foo --config config_file 2>&1 | /usr/bin/tee temp.log
The script uses Popen to execute this command as follows:
from subprocess import Popen
from subprocess import PIPE
def run_command(command, returnObject=False):
cmd = command.split(' ')
print('%s' % cmd)
p = None
print('command : %s' % command)
if returnObject:
p = Popen(cmd)
else:
p = Popen(cmd)
p.communicate()
print('returncode: %s' % p.returncode)
return p.returncode
return p
command = "./main/foo --config config_file 2>&1 | /usr/bin/tee temp.log
"
run_command(command)
However, this passes extra arguments ['2>&1', '|', '/usr/bin/tee', 'temp.log'] to the foo executable.
How can I get rid of these extra arguments getting passed to foo while maintaining the functionality?
I have tried shell=True but read about avoiding it for security purposes (shell injection attack). Looking for a neat solution.
Thanks
UPDATE:
- Updated the file following the tee command

The string
./main/foo --config config_file 2>&1 | /usr/bin/tee >temp.log
...is full of shell constructs. These have no meaning to anything without a shell in play. Thus, you have two options:
Set shell=True
Replace them with native Python code.
For instance, 2>&1 is the same thing as passing stderr=subprocess.STDOUT to Popen, and your tee -- since its output is redirected and it's passed no arguments -- could just be replaced with stdout=open('temp.log', 'w').
Thus:
p = subprocess.Popen(['./main/foo', '--config', 'config_file'],
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
stdout=open('temp.log', 'w'))
...or, if you really did want the tee command, but were just using it incorrectly (that is, if you wanted tee temp.log, not tee >temp.log):
p1 = subprocess.Popen(['./main/foo', '--config', 'config_file'],
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
p2 = subprocess.Popen(['tee', 'temp.log'], stdin=p1.stdout)
p1.stdout.close() # drop our own handle so p2's stdin is the only handle on p1.stdout
stdout, _ = p2.communicate()
Wrapping this in a function, and checking success for both ends might look like:
def run():
p1 = subprocess.Popen(['./main/foo', '--config', 'config_file'],
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
p2 = subprocess.Popen(['tee', 'temp.log'], stdin=p1.stdout)
p1.stdout.close() # drop our own handle so p2's stdin is the only handle on p1.stdout
# True if both processes were successful, False otherwise
return (p2.wait() == 0 && p1.wait() == 0)
By the way -- if you want to use shell=True and return the exit status of foo, rather than tee, things get a bit more interesting. Consider the following:
p = subprocess.Popen(['bash', '-c', 'set -o pipefail; ' + command_str])
...the pipefail bash extension will force the shell to exit with the status of the first pipeline component to fail (and 0 if no components fail), rather than using only the exit status of the final component.

Here's a couple of "neat" code examples in addition to the explanation from #Charles Duffy answer.
To run the shell command in Python:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from subprocess import check_call
check_call("./main/foo --config config_file 2>&1 | /usr/bin/tee temp.log",
shell=True)
without the shell:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE, STDOUT
tee = Popen(["/usr/bin/tee", "temp.log"], stdin=PIPE)
foo = Popen("./main/foo --config config_file".split(),
stdout=tee.stdin, stderr=STDOUT)
pipestatus = [foo.wait(), tee.wait()]
Note: don't use "command arg".split() with non-literal strings.
See How do I use subprocess.Popen to connect multiple processes by pipes?

You may combine answers to two StackOverflow questions:
1. piping together several subprocesses
x | y problem
2. Merging a Python script's subprocess' stdout and stderr (while keeping them distinguishable)
2>&1 problem

Python test if client exist

I am new to python and working on trying to make a script which checks if a specified host as for example sensu-client exist. I use a deployment software called NSO and run it by: nso status and it shows me this information:
nagios-client host nagios-client down
test host test down
Is there any possibility to make a script to check if for example nagios-Client exist with a script ?
In shell I do it by:
nso status | awk '{ print $1 }'

In this case I would suggest using subprocess' check_output function. The documentation is here. check_output can return, as a string the shell output of a command. So you would have something like this:
import subprocess
foo=subprocess.check_output(['nso', 'status', '|', 'awk', '\'{ print $1 }\''], shell=True)
#Thanks bereal for shell=True
print foo
Of course, if your only targeting linux, you could use the much easier sh module. It allows you to import programs as if they were libraries.

you can use subprocess to run this command and parse the output
import subprocess
command = ['nso', 'status', '|', 'awk', '\'{ print $1 }\'']
p1 = subprocess.Popen(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

You don't have to run awk, since you're already in Python:
import subprocess
proc = subprocess.Popen(['nso', 'status'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
# get stdout as a EOL-separated string, ignore stderr for now
out, _ = proc.communicate()
# parse the output, line.split()[0] is awk's $1
items = [line.split()[0] for line in out.split('\n')]

python subprocess issue with Nmap

Im trying to get a linux binary to send its standard output to a variable by using subprocess. But just keep getting tracebacks.
>>> import subprocess
>>>nmap -sn -Pn todd.ns.cloudflare.com --script dns-check-zone --script-args='dns-check-zone.domain=www.macmonster.com
Any Ideas (oh and Im using Python2.7).
Ideally I would like to avoid using Shell=true to avoid any security concerns.
Thanks,

shlex to the rescue!
The module shlex will take a string containing the whole shell command and split it up exactly how Popen and check_output expect it. Like this:
import shlex, subprocess
cmd = "/usr/bin/nmap -sn -Pn todd.ns.cloudflare.com --script dns-check-zone --script-args='dns-check-zone.domain=www.macmonster.com'"
args = shlex.split(cmd)
output = subprocess.check_output(args)
When you look at contents of args you'll see:
>>> print args
['/usr/bin/nmap', '-sn', '-Pn', 'todd.ns.cloudflare.com', '--script', 'dns-check-zone', '--script-args=dns-check-zone.domain=www.macmonster.com']
Note that shlex split up the option "--script dns-check-zone" into two tokens. On the other hand it kept "--script-args='dns-check-zone.domain=www.macmonster.com'", but removed the single-quotes.

import subprocess
output = subprocess.check_output(["/usr/bin/nmap", "-sP", "-n", "172.16.1.0/24"])
output = subprocess.check_output(["/usr/bin/nmap", "-sP", "-n", "172.16.1.0/24"], stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

Have you tried this:
p = subprocess.Popen(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
var = p.stdout.read()
print var
I would have used communicate, but it returns an odd list-type thing.

Popen.communicate escapes a string I send to stdin

I am trying to spawn a process using Popen and send it a particular string to its stdin.
I have:
pipe = subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
pipe.communicate( my_stdin_str.encode(encoding='ascii') )
pipe.stdin.close()
However, the second line actually escapes the whitespace in my_stdin_str. For example, if I have:
my_stdin_str="This is a string"
The process will see:
This\ is\ a\ string
How can I prevent this behaviour?

I can't reproduce it on Ubuntu:
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
shell_cmd = "perl -pE's/.\K/-/g'"
p = Popen(shell_cmd, shell=True, stdin=PIPE)
p.communicate("This $PATH is a string".encode('ascii'))
In this case shell=True is unnecessary:
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
cmd = ["perl", "-pE" , "s/.\K/-/g"]
p = Popen(cmd, stdin=PIPE)
p.communicate("This $PATH is a string".encode('ascii'))
Both produce the same output:
T-h-i-s- -$-P-A-T-H- -i-s- -a- -s-t-r-i-n-g-

Unless you know you need it for some reason, don't run with "shell=True" in general (which, without testing, sounds like what's going on here).