Concept: subprocess

The subprocess module allows us to run other programs from our script.

The run function is the simplest way to run a command. The functions has three important parameters:

• A list of strings that make up the command and its arguments. The first string is the command, the rest are arguments.
• capture_output (default: False) which determines whether the output of the command is printed to the terminal or captured in the result object.
• text (default: False) which determines whether the output is returned as bytes or as a string.

import subprocess

result = subprocess.run(["ping", "-c", "1", "1.1.1.1"])

The result object has a few useful attributes:

Attribute	Description
stdout	The output of the command, as bytes or string depending on the text parameter.
stderr	The error output of the command, as bytes or string depending on the text parameter.
returncode	The exit code of the command. 0 means success, anything else is an error.