asmith26 / bash

Run bash commands from python

bash for python

A library that enables easy running and concatenation of bash commands in python

Installation

Install using pip:

pip install bash

Usage

Run commands as you would in bash:

>>> from bash import bash
>>> bash('ls . | grep ".pyc"')
bash.pyc
tests.pyc

Chain commands for the same effect:

>>> bash('ls . ').bash('grep ".pyc"')
bash.pyc
tests.pyc

This becomes increasingly useful if you later need to reuse one such command:

>>> b = bash('ls . ')
>>> b.bash('grep ".pyc"')
bash.pyc
tests.pyc
>>> b.bash('grep ".py$')
bash.py
tests.py

Access stdout and stderr attributes:

>>> b = bash('ls tests.py')
>>> b.stdout
'tests.py\n'
>>> b.stderr
''

Get the return code generated by a command:

>>> b = bash('ls tests.py')
>>> b
tests.py
>>> b.code
0

To get a stripped, unicode string version of bash.stdout call value():

>>> b = bash('ls tests.py').value()
u'tests.py'

Motivation

I found that I was often having to write the same lines of code to handle running bash commands from python.

This provides a pip-installable, tested shortcut to writing:

from subprocess import PIPE, Popen

p = Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdout=PIPE, stdin=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
output, err = p.communicate()

Warning

Please note that this library uses shell=True under the hood. This means that this library is NOT suitable for running untrusted commands. (See explanation)

Running the tests

Simply use a test runner.

$ nosetests

Support + Contributing

Feel free to make pull requests, or report issues via the repo:

https://github.com/alexcouper/bash