running multiple bash commands with subprocess

Question

If I run echo a; echo b in bash the result will be that both commands are run. However if I use subprocess then the first command is run, printing out the whole of the rest of the line. The code below echos a; echo b instead of a b, how do I get it to run both commands?

import subprocess, shlex
def subprocess_cmd(command):
    process = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split(command), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    proc_stdout = process.communicate()[0].strip() 
    print proc_stdout

subprocess_cmd("echo a; echo b")

Answer 1

I just stumbled on a situation where I needed to run a bunch of lines of bash code (not separated with semicolons) from within python. In this scenario the proposed solutions do not help. One approach would be to save a file and then run it with Popen, but it wasn't possible in my situation.

What I ended up doing is something like:

commands = '''
echo "a"
echo "b"
echo "c"
echo "d"
'''

process = subprocess.Popen('/bin/bash', stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = process.communicate(commands)
print out

So I first create the child bash process and after I tell it what to execute. This approach removes the limitations of passing the command directly to the Popen constructor.

Answer 2

Join commands with "&&".

os.system('echo a > outputa.txt && echo b > outputb.txt')

Answer 3

If you're only running the commands in one shot then you can just use subprocess.check_output convenience function:

def subprocess_cmd(command):
    output = subprocess.check_output(command, shell=True)
    print output

Answer 4

>>> command = "echo a; echo b"
>>> shlex.split(command);
    ['echo', 'a; echo', 'b']

so, the problem is shlex module do not handle ";"

Answer 5

You have to use shell=True in subprocess and no shlex.split:

def subprocess_cmd(command):
    process = subprocess.Popen(command,stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
    proc_stdout = process.communicate()[0].strip()
    print proc_stdout

subprocess_cmd('echo a; echo b')

returns:

a
b