subprocess.check_output return code

Python 3.5 introduced the subprocess.run() method. The signature looks like:

subprocess.run(
  args, 
  *, 
  stdin=None, 
  input=None, 
  stdout=None, 
  stderr=None, 
  shell=False, 
  timeout=None, 
  check=False
)

The returned result is a subprocess.CompletedProcess. In 3.5, you can access the args, returncode, stdout, and stderr from the executed process.

Example:

>>> result = subprocess.run(['ls', '/tmp'], stdout=subprocess.DEVNULL)
>>> result.returncode
0

>>> result = subprocess.run(['ls', '/nonexistent'], stderr=subprocess.DEVNULL)
>>> result.returncode
2

is there a way to get a return code without a try/except?

check_output raises an exception if it receives non-zero exit status because it frequently means that a command failed. grep may return non-zero exit status even if there is no error -- you could use .communicate() in this case:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

pattern, filename = 'test', 'tmp'
p = Popen(['grep', pattern, filename], stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE,
          bufsize=-1)
output, error = p.communicate()
if p.returncode == 0:
   print('%r is found in %s: %r' % (pattern, filename, output))
elif p.returncode == 1:
   print('%r is NOT found in %s: %r' % (pattern, filename, output))
else:
   assert p.returncode > 1
   print('error occurred: %r' % (error,))

You don't need to call an external command to filter lines, you could do it in pure Python:

with open('tmp') as file:
    for line in file:
        if 'test' in line:
            print line,

If you don't need the output; you could use subprocess.call():

import os
from subprocess import call
try:
    from subprocess import DEVNULL # Python 3
except ImportError: # Python 2
    DEVNULL = open(os.devnull, 'r+b', 0)

returncode = call(['grep', 'test', 'tmp'], 
                  stdin=DEVNULL, stdout=DEVNULL, stderr=DEVNULL)

Note that since Python 3.5 it is better to use subprocess.run() :

import subprocess

grepOut = subprocess.run(['grep', search, 'tmp'], shell=True) ## Only use shell=True if necessary

This will generate a subprocess.CompletedProcess instance which will be stored at grepOut. Then, and finally answering your question, you can get the return value from subprocess.run() like this:

grepOut.returncode

which will be equal to 0 if the command was successful, and not equal to 0 if it failed.

Finally, for completeness sake, you could even handle the error by means of a try/except block using the method check_returncode() from subprocess.CompletedProcess class:

try:
    ## Add argument `capture_output=True` if you want to store the output of the command
    grepOut = subprocess.run(['grep', search, 'tmp'], shell=True)
    grepOut.check_returncode()

except subprocess.CalledProcessError as err:
    ## If returncode is non-zero, raise a CalledProcessError and print this message
    print(f"Oops, something went wrong. Error code: {err.returncode}")

Hope it is clear enough.

To get both output and return code (without try/except) simply use subprocess.getstatusoutput (Python 3 required)

In Python 2 - use commands module:

import command
rc, out = commands.getstatusoutput("ls missing-file")
if rc != 0: print "Error occurred: %s" % out

In Python 3 - use subprocess module:

import subprocess
rc, out = subprocess.getstatusoutput("ls missing-file")
if rc != 0: print ("Error occurred:", out)

Error occurred: ls: cannot access missing-file: No such file or directory