How do I get data from stdin using os.system()

Question

The only reliable method that I a have found for using a script to download text from wikipedia is with cURL. So far the only way I have for doing that is to call os.system(). Even though the output appears properly in the python shell I can't seem to the function it to return anything other than the exit code(0). Alternately somebody could show be how to properly use urllib.

Answer 1

From Dive into Python:

import urllib
sock = urllib.urlopen("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)")
htmlsource = sock.read()
sock.close()
print htmlsource

That will print out the source code for the Python Wikipedia article. I suggest you take a look at Dive into Python for more details.

Example using urllib2 from the Python Library Reference:

import urllib2
f = urllib2.urlopen('http://www.python.org/')
print f.read(100)

Edit: Also you might want to take a look at wget.
Edit2: Added urllib2 example based on S.Lott's advice

Answer 2

Answering the question, Python has a subprocess module which allows you to interact with spawned processes.http://docs.python.org/library/subprocess.html#subprocess.Popen

It allows you to read the stdout for the invoked process, and even send items to the stdin.

however as you said urllib is a much better option. if you search stackoverflow i am sure you will find at least 10 other related questions...

Answer 3

As an alternetive to urllib, you could use the libCurl Python bindings.