Capturing output of os.system to a string

[gerry.butler]

How do I capture output to a string? For example, the output of
os.system('whoami').

I guess I need to redirect stdout, but I'm a total beginner, and I
haven't been able to find out from the tutorials how to do this.

[Lie Ryan]

You can't with os.system; use subprocess module instead.

[gerry.butler]

Thank you. I'll look at subprocess.

I have since found that commands will do it too, eg,

(status, txt) = commands.getstatusoutput('whoami')

or txt = commands.getoutput('whoami')