Python still has (even in 3.2) os.system, which is the equivalent of the backticks from perl/shell. The subprocess module is preferred because you have more control and options than simply deferring to the C library's system() call.
Python still has (even in 3.2) os.system, which is the equivalent of the backticks from perl/shell.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The os.system call is the equivalent of Perl's system call. It runs an external command and gives you a return code, but does not give you the text generated by said system call. The officially recommended (as of Python 2.6) way to get said text is what I wrote.
The deprecated but possibly still working solution is to use os.popen. That is cleaner for this common use case, but I chose to stick to the the officially recommended solution instead.
Eventually the Python folks realized that the blessed One True Way to do it was actually pretty horrible, and so they added subprocess.check_output in 2.7.
