Return a value from shell script when it is called from a python script

Question

I have a shell script abc.sh which is called from a Python script custom_package.py using subprocess.call function call. I want to return a value from abc.sh and read it in Python.

Python call to shell script is as follows.

subprocess.call(['abc.sh', user, password])

abc.sh echos "running" or "not running". How can I capture "running" or "not running" in the Python script? Something like:

ret_val = subprocess.call(['abc.sh', user, password])

I have tried subprocess.check_output but it's not working.

ret_val = subprocess.check_output(['abc.sh', user, password])

Answer 1

Use subprocess.check_output to capture the output of a subprocess. If the string 'not' is not in the returned value, the output was just 'running' .

output = subprocess.check_output(['abc.sh', user, password])
print(output)
running = 'not' not in output