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i'm trying to do shell command then save the output into variable using shell script. So i use backticks like this : 

out=`ls -l`
print $out

that code is working fine,and i can use it for any other shell command, but when i try to do 'python --version' to check python version. i got weird problem. The backtick is not working for "python --version" command while it's working fine with any other commands, it prints the output to the screen and save nothing to the variable $out. so if i do :

out =`python --version`
print "my python version is "$out

result:

Python 2.6.1
my python version is

also i tried to use $() to replace backtick , but no luck. Any idea ?

andio
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1 Answers1

10

You have a space before your equals sign:

out =`python --version`

Should be:

out=`python --version`

Update

Also python outputs the version string to stderr, so you need to redirect it to stdout:

out=`python --version 2>&1`
Paul
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    perfecto, Thanx a lot. now it works fine. Like you said , the problem is that python output it to stderr. out=\`python --version 2>&1\` works! Thanx. – andio May 08 '12 at 03:20
  • I was working on writing a pre-commit hook and also couldn't figure out why the output wasn't being saved. Your 2>&1 trick worked great! Thanks! – NateW Dec 11 '15 at 19:47