running multiple bash commands with subprocess

Question

If I run echo a; echo b in bash the result will be that both commands are run. However if I use subprocess then the first command is run, printing out the whole

Answer 1

You have to use shell=True in subprocess and no shlex.split:

def subprocess_cmd(command):
    process = subprocess.Popen(command,stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
    proc_stdout = process.communicate()[0].strip()
    print proc_stdout

subprocess_cmd('echo a; echo b')

returns:

a
b