Quick, dirty function to call shell commands from Python

run_shell_cmd.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import subprocess


def run_shell_cmd(cmd, *shell):
    # Might want to use a "try" or call.check in case Command fails
    if "shell" in shell.lower():
        process = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
                stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
    else:
        process = subprocess.Popen(cmd.split(),
                stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    output = process.communicate()[0]
    rc = process.returncode
    return output, rc

  
# Examples
output, returncode = (run_shell_cmd("echo hello"))
# output = (run_shell_cmd("echo hello")[0])
# Output will include the newline in it unless stripped.
# Output is also a byte object in Python3 as opposed to a string
# returncode = (run_shell_cmd("echo hello")[1])

print("The output of the 1st shell command is: " + output.decode("utf-8").rstrip())
print("The return code of the 1st shell command is:", returncode)
print()

output = run_shell_cmd("echo pipes{junk} and special characters | awk -F '{[^}]*}' '{print $1 $2}'", "shell")[0]
print("Using subprocess' shell=True works with", output.decode("utf-8").rstrip())