Wrapping a program and checking the output

One common kind of automation involves running several programs, none of which are actually Python applications. In this case, it's impossible to refactor the programs to create a composite Python application. In order to properly aggregate the functionality, the other programs must be wrapped as a Python class or module to provide a higher-level construct.

The use case for this is very similar to the use case for writing a shell script. The difference is that Python can be a better programming language than the OS's built-in shell languages.

In some cases, the advantage Python offers is the ability to perform detailed aggregation and analysis of the output files. A Python program might transform, filter, or summarize the output from a subprocess.

In this recipe, we'll see how to run other applications from within Python, collecting and processing the other applications' output.

Getting ready

In...