<s>[INST] Store output of subprocess.Popen call in a string I'm trying to make a system call in Python and store the output to a string that I can manipulate in the Python program.
#!/usr/bin/python
import subprocess
p2 = subprocess.Popen("ntpq -p")

I've tried a few things including some of the suggestions here:
Retrieving the output of subprocess.call()
but without any luck.
 [/INST] In Python 2.7 or Python 3
Instead of making a Popen object directly, you can use the subprocess.check_output() function to store output of a command in a string:
from subprocess import check_output

out = check_output(["ntpq", "-p"])

In Python 2.4-2.6
Use the communicate method.
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen(["ntpq", "-p"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = p.communicate()

out is what you want.
Important note about the other answers
Note how I passed in the command. The "ntpq -p" example brings up another matter. Since Popen does not involke the shell, you would use a list of the command and optionsâ["ntpq", "-p"].
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