title: Equivalent of Bash Backticks in Python
body: <p>What is the equivalent of the backticks found in Ruby and Perl in Python? That is, in Ruby I can do this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>foo = `cat /tmp/baz`
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What does the equivalent statement look like in Python? I've tried <code>os.system("cat /tmp/baz")</code> but that puts the result to standard out and returns to me the error code of that operation.</p>