Running bash command with python subprocess

Question

I have a command in my bash_profile such as id=12345 which I defined the following alias

alias obs="echo $id" since the id will chance over time.

Now what I want to do is call this alias in my python script for different purposes. My default shell is bash so I have tried the following based on the suggestions on the web

import subprocess

subprocess.call('obs', shell=True, executable='/bin/bash')

subprocess.call(['/bin/bash', '-i', '-c', obs])

subprocess.Popen('obs', shell=True,executable='/bin/bash')

subprocess.Popen(['/bin/bash', '-c','-i', obs])

However, none of them seems to work! What am I doing wrong!

Answer 1

.bash_profile is not read by Popen and friends.

Environment variables are available for your script, though (via os.environ ).

You can use export in your Bash shell to export a value as an environment variable, or use env :

export MY_SPECIAL_VALUE=12345
python -c "import os; print(os.environ['MY_SPECIAL_VALUE'])"
# or
env MY_SPECIAL_VALUE=12345 python -c "import os; print(os.environ['MY_SPECIAL_VALUE'])"