subprocess.check_output return code

Question

I am using:

grepOut = subprocess.check_output("grep " + search + " tmp", shell=True)

To run a terminal command, I know that I can use a try/except to catch the error but how can I get the value of the error code?

I found this on the official documentation:

 exception subprocess.CalledProcessError

    Exception raised when a process run by check_call() or check_output() returns a non-zero exit status.

    returncode

        Exit status of the child process.

But there are no examples given and Google was of no help.

Answer 1

You can get the error code and results from the exception that is raised.

This can be done through the fields returncode and output.

For example:

import subprocess

try:
   grepOut = subprocess.check_output("grep " + "test" + " tmp", shell=True)                       
except subprocess.CalledProcessError as grepexc:                                                                                                   
    print "error code", grepexc.returncode, grepexc.output

Answer 2

is there a way to get a return code without a try/except?

check_output raises an exception if it receives non-zero exit status because it frequently means that a command failed. grep may return non-zero exit status even if there is no error -- you could use .communicate() in this case:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

pattern, filename = 'test', 'tmp'
p = Popen(['grep', pattern, filename], stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE,
          bufsize=-1)
output, error = p.communicate()
if p.returncode == 0:
   print('%r is found in %s: %r' % (pattern, filename, output))
elif p.returncode == 1:
   print('%r is NOT found in %s: %r' % (pattern, filename, output))
else:
   assert p.returncode > 1
   print('error occurred: %r' % (error,))

You don't need to call an external command to filter lines, you could do it in pure Python:

with open('tmp') as file:
    for line in file:
        if 'test' in line:
            print line,

If you don't need the output; you could use subprocess.call():

import os
from subprocess import call
try:
    from subprocess import DEVNULL # Python 3
except ImportError: # Python 2
    DEVNULL = open(os.devnull, 'r+b', 0)

returncode = call(['grep', 'test', 'tmp'], 
                  stdin=DEVNULL, stdout=DEVNULL, stderr=DEVNULL)

Answer 3

Python 3.5 introduced the subprocess.run() method. The signature looks like:

subprocess.run(
  args, 
  *, 
  stdin=None, 
  input=None, 
  stdout=None, 
  stderr=None, 
  shell=False, 
  timeout=None, 
  check=False
)

The returned result is a subprocess.CompletedProcess. In 3.5, you can access the args, returncode, stdout, and stderr from the executed process.

Example:

>>> result = subprocess.run(['ls', '/tmp'], stdout=subprocess.DEVNULL)
>>> result.returncode
0

>>> result = subprocess.run(['ls', '/nonexistent'], stderr=subprocess.DEVNULL)
>>> result.returncode
2