Read the result of a shell command into a pandas dataframe

read_shell.py

#! /usr/bin/env python3

import io
import subprocess
import pandas

def read_shell(command, **kwargs):
    """
    Takes a shell command as a string and and reads the result into a Pandas DataFrame.
    
    Additional keyword arguments are passed through to `pandas.read_table`.
    
    :param command: a shell command that returns tabular data
    :type command: str
    
    :return: a pandas datafram
    :rtype: :class:`pandas.dataframe`
    """
    proc = subprocess.Popen(command, 
                            shell=True,
                            stdout=subprocess.PIPE, 
                            stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
    output, error = proc.communicate()
    
    if proc.returncode == 0:
        with io.StringIO(output.decode()) as buffer:
            return pandas.read_table(buffer, **kwargs)
    else:
        message = ("Shell command returned non-zero exit status: {0}\n\n"
                   "Command was:\n{1}\n\n"
                   "Standard error was:\n{2}")
        raise IOError(message.format(proc.returncode, command, error.decode()))