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

I just stumbled on a situation where I needed to run a bunch of lines of bash code (not separated with semicolons) from within python. In this scenario the proposed solutions do not help. One approach would be to save a file and then run it with Popen, but it wasn't possible in my situation.

What I ended up doing is something like:

commands = '''
echo "a"
echo "b"
echo "c"
echo "d"
'''

process = subprocess.Popen('/bin/bash', stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = process.communicate(commands)
print out

So I first create the child bash process and after I tell it what to execute. This approach removes the limitations of passing the command directly to the Popen constructor.