sh: 'subprocess.Popen' for humans

programming

sh is a full-fledged subprocess replacement for Python 2.6 - 3.5, PyPy and PyPy3 that allows you to call any program as if it were a function.

It handles many tasks that make working with ‘Popen’ tedious:

  • Easy, and concise way of passing arguments
  • Handling of exit codes
  • Output redirection (!)
  • Piping
  • Background processing

and much more! for example:

from sh import ifconfig
print(ifconfig("wlan0"))

wlan0   Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
        inet addr:192.168.1.100  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
        inet6 addr: ffff::ffff:ffff:ffff:fff/64 Scope:Link
        UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
        RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
        TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
        collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
        RX bytes:0 (0 GB)  TX bytes:0 (0 GB)

Note that these aren’t Python functions, these are running the binary commands on your system by dynamically resolving your $PATH, much like Bash does, and then wrapping the binary in a function. In this way, all the programs on your system are easily available to you from within Python.

Installation

$ pip install sh

Docs & more: amoffat.github.io/sh

Disclaimer

I didn’t write sh, I’m just a fan :)