shell script can not save output from command line into variable

Question

i'm trying to do shell command then save the output into variable using shell script. So i use backticks like this :

out=`ls -l`
print $out

that code is working fine,and i can use it for any other shell command, but when i try to do 'python --version' to check python version. i got weird problem. The backtick is not working for "python --version" command while it's working fine with any other commands, it prints the output to the screen and save nothing to the variable $out. so if i do :

out =`python --version`
print "my python version is "$out

result:

Python 2.6.1
my python version is 

also i tried to use $() to replace backtick , but no luck. Any idea ?

Answer 1

You have a space before your equals sign:

out =`python --version`

Should be:

out=`python --version`

Update

Also python outputs the version string to stderr, so you need to redirect it to stdout:

out=`python --version 2>&1`