os.system()

• executed in a subshell, usually bash on linux and OSX, and cmd.exe on windows.
• The shell will take the string given and interpret the escape characters.
  • ex)  os.system(“python –version”)

subprocess.call()

• default does not use a shell – it simply tries to run an executable with a name given by string a. You actually can’t pass any arguments in the string a – only the literal name of the executable.
• To run a command with arguments, I need to give this to subprocess.call as a list
  • ex)  subprocess.call([“python”, “–version”])

 

subprocess.call() can be used same as os.system() by setting shell to true.

• ex)  subprocess.call(“python –version”, shell=True)