Parsing netstat in Linux

gistfile1.py

    return_value = []
    output = subprocess.Popen(
        ['netstat','--interfaces','all'],
        stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
    #Kernel Interface table
    #Iface   MTU Met   RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR    TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
    #eth0       1500 0   1229230      0      0 0       1279754      0      0 0 BMRU
    #lo        16436 0       163      0      0 0           163      0      0 0 LRU
    lines = output.strip().splitlines()
    lines.pop(0)
    lines.pop(0)
    for line in lines:
        line = line.strip().split()
        return_value.append(line[0])
    return return_value

This chunk of code parses the output of netstat to list all of the network interfaces on the host. I found an easier way: os.listdir('/sys/class/net').