Is there a quiet version of subprocess.call?

Question

Is there a variant of subprocess.call that can run the command without printing to standard out, or a way to block out it\'s standard out messages?

Answer 1

This is a recipe I use a lot: call subprocess and collect the output, and when the command succeeds discard the output, but when it fails print the output.

import subprocess as sp
import sys

if "print" in __builtins__.__dict__:
    prn = __builtins__.__dict__["print"]
else:
    def prn(*args, **kwargs):
        """
        prn(value, ..., sep=' ', end='\\n', file=sys.stdout)
        Works just like the print function in Python 3.x but can be used in 2.x.

        Prints the values to a stream, or to sys.stdout by default.
        Optional keyword arguments:
        file: a file-like object (stream); defaults to the current sys.stdout.
        sep:  string inserted between values, default a space.
        end:  string appended after the last value, default a newline.
        """
        sep = kwargs.get("sep", ' ')
        end = kwargs.get("end", '\n')
        file = kwargs.get("file", sys.stdout)

        s = sep.join(str(x) for x in args) + end
        file.write(s)


def rc_run_cmd_basic(lst_cmd, verbose=False, silent=False):
    if silent and verbose:
        raise ValueError("cannot specify both verbose and silent as true")

    p = sp.Popen(lst_cmd, stdin=sp.PIPE, stdout=sp.PIPE, stderr=sp.PIPE)
    tup_output = p.communicate()

    s_cmd = ' '.join(lst_cmd)
    if verbose:
        prn()
        prn("command: '%s'\n" % s_cmd)

        if 0 != p.returncode:
            prn()
            prn("Command failed with code %d:" % p.returncode)
        else:
            prn("Command succeeded!  code %d" % p.returncode)
    if verbose:
        prn("Output for: " + s_cmd)
        prn(tup_output[0])
        prn()
    if not silent and 0 != p.returncode:
        prn("Error output for: " + s_cmd)
        prn(tup_output[1])
        prn()

    return p.returncode