Using && in subprocess.Popen for command chaining?

Question

I'm using subprocess.Popen with Python, and I haven't come across an elegant solution for joining commands (i.e. foobar&& bizbang) via Popen.

I could do this:

p1 = subprocess.Popen(["mmls", "WinXP.E01"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
result = p1.communicate()[0].split("\n")
for line in result:
    script_log.write(line)

script_log.write("\n")

p1 = subprocess.Popen(["stat", "WinXP.E01"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
result = p1.communicate()[0].split("\n")
for line in result:
    script_log.write(line)

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But that really isn't very aesthetically pleasing (especially if I'm daisy-chaining multiple commands via Popen.

---

I'd like to replicate this output in as few command blocks as possible.

not@work ~/ESI/lab3/images $ mmls WinXP.E01 && echo -e "\n" && stat WinXP.E01
DOS Partition Table
Offset Sector: 0
Units are in 512-byte sectors

     Slot    Start        End          Length       Description
00:  Meta    0000000000   0000000000   0000000001   Primary Table (#0)
01:  -----   0000000000   0000000062   0000000063   Unallocated
02:  00:00   0000000063   0020948759   0020948697   NTFS (0x07)
03:  -----   0020948760   0020971519   0000022760   Unallocated


  File: `WinXP.E01'
  Size: 4665518381  Blocks: 9112368    IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 14h/20d Inode: 4195953     Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: ( 1000/    nott)   Gid: ( 1000/    nott)
Access: 2013-03-16 23:20:41.901326579 -0400
Modify: 2013-03-04 10:05:50.000000000 -0500
Change: 2013-03-13 00:25:33.254684050 -0400
 Birth: -

---

Any suggestions?

Note: I'd like to avoid typing this into subprocess.Popen

p1 = subprocess.Popen(["mmls WinXP.E01 && echo -e '\n' && stat WinXP.E01"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

Answer 1

&& is a shell operator, POpen does not use a shell by default.

If you want to use shell functionality use shell=True in your POpen call, but be aware that it is slightly slower/more memory intensive.

p1 = subprocess.Popen(["mmls", "WinXP.E01", "&&", "echo", "-e", "\"\n\"", "&&", "stat", "WinXP.E01"],
                      stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)