Use os module to access system level functions
Get to know os module
The os module can access several operating system services.
The following table has some important functions and variables in the os module.
Function/Variable | Description |
---|---|
environ | Mapping with environment variables |
system(command) | Executes an OS command in a subshell |
sep | Separator used in paths |
pathsep | Separator to separate paths |
linesep | Line separator ( '\n', '\r', or '\r\n') |
urandom(n) | Returns n bytes of cryptographically strong random data |
Run System command
In UNIX, you can do the following to start the firefox browser.
os.system('/usr/bin/firefox')
A Windows version would be
os.system(r'c:\"Program Files"\"Mozilla Firefox"\firefox.exe')
We can use another function os.startfile on Windows as well.
os.startfile(r' c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe')
We can use system
function to call other system functions.
import os# w ww . ja v a2 s . c o m
result = os.system('cat /etc/motd')
print result
result = os.system('uname -a')
print result
result = os.system('dir')
os.system("copy c:\\temp.dat c:\\temp1.dat")
The code above generates the following result.