Convert bytes to a string

Question

I\'m using this code to get standard output from an external program:

>>> from subprocess import *
>>> command_stdout = Popen([\'ls\', \'-l         


        

Answer 1

For your specific case of "run a shell command and get its output as text instead of bytes", on Python 3.7, you should use subprocess.run and pass in text=True (as well as capture_output=True to capture the output)

command_result = subprocess.run(["ls", "-l"], capture_output=True, text=True)
command_result.stdout  # is a `str` containing your program's stdout

text used to be called universal_newlines, and was changed (well, aliased) in Python 3.7. If you want to support Python versions before 3.7, pass in universal_newlines=True instead of text=True