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3

I have a bash script provided by a 3d party which defines a set of functions. Here's a template of what that looks like

$ cat test.sh

#!/bin/bash

define go() {
    echo "hello"
}

I can do the following from a bash shell to call go():

$ source test.sh
$ go
hello

Is there any way to access the same function from a python script? I tried the following, but it didn't work:

Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Sep 15 2010, 15:52:39) 
[GCC 4.4.5] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import subprocess
>>> subprocess.call("source test.sh")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 470, in call
    return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 623, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 1141, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
>>>
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3  
What function is it in bash that you can't duplicate in Python? –  ghostdog74 Apr 29 '11 at 0:18

2 Answers 2

up vote 22 down vote accepted

Yes, indirectly. Given this foo.sh:

function go() { 
    echo "hi" 
}

Try this:

>>> subprocess.Popen(['bash', '-c', '. foo.sh; go'])

Output:

hi
share|improve this answer
    
Excellent, thanks! –  Ravi Apr 29 '11 at 0:28
up vote 1 down vote

No, the function is only available within that bash script.

What you could do is adapt the bash script by checking for an argument and execute functions if a specific argument is given.

For example

# $1 is the first argument

case $1 in
 "go" )
       go
       ;;
 "otherfunc" )
       otherfunc
       ;;
 * )
       echo "Unknown function"
       ;;
esac

Then you can call the function like this:

subprocess.call("test.sh otherfunc")
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