os.popen(), capturing shell command output

>>> import os
>>> prc = os.popen('ls -al')
>>> argout = prc.read()
>>> prc.close()
>>> print( argout)
total 40
drwxr-xr-x  2 kracht users   20480 Dec  9 14:22 .
drwxr-xr-x 96 kracht hasylab 12288 Dec  9 11:36 ..
-rwxr-xr-x  1 kracht hasylab   194 Aug  1 14:06 Clean.pl
-rwxr-xr-x  1 kracht hasylab   450 Dec  9 14:16 t1.py

Notice that, if a call to a sub-shell has to be protected by a time-out, it has to be done this way 15.6.5.