Exec a shell command in Go

Question

I'm looking to execute a shell command in Go and get the resulting output as a string in my program. I saw the Rosetta Code version:

package main
import "fmt"
import "exec"

func main() {
  cmd, err := exec.Run("/bin/ls", []string{"/bin/ls"}, []string{}, "", exec.DevNull, exec.PassThrough, exec.PassThrough)
  if (err != nil) {
    fmt.Println(err)
    return
  }
  cmd.Close()

But this doesn't capture the actual standard out or err in a way that I can programatically access - those still print out to the regular stdout / stderr. I saw that using Pipe as the out or err could help elsewhere, but no example of how to do so. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The package "exec" was changed a little bit. The following code worked for me.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os/exec"
)

func main() {
    app := "echo"

    arg0 := "-e"
    arg1 := "Hello world"
    arg2 := "\n\tfrom"
    arg3 := "golang"

    cmd := exec.Command(app, arg0, arg1, arg2, arg3)
    stdout, err := cmd.Output()

    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println(err.Error())
        return
    }

    // Print the output
    fmt.Println(string(stdout))
}

I hope this helps!