Python shell interface is painful (subprocess, commands, etc.)

subprocess_is_painful.py

url = "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkCTAeLsX7E"
import os
import sysfrom sys import stderr
import tempfile
import commandsfrom os import path

from sys import stdout
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE, STDOUT


def run(cmd, silent=False):
    #cmd = "./sleep.sh"
    print "+", cmd
    proc = Popen(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, shell=True)
    #proc = Popen(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, shell=True).communicate()
    #proc = subprocess.check_call(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=STDOUT, shell=True)
    output = ""
    for line in iter(proc.stdout.readline, ""):
        line = line.replace('\n', '')
        if not silent:
            print line
            stdout.flush()
        output += line
    proc.wait()
    status = proc.returncode
    if status:        msg = "command failed with status %d" % (status)
        print >> stderr, msg        if len(output) > 0:            print >> stderr, "output:"
            print >> stderr, output
        else:
            print >> stderr, "(no output)"
        raise RuntimeError(msg)
    return output

tmp_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
print 'tmp_dir:', tmp_dir

run("command -v youtube-dl")
vid_fname = run("youtube-dl --get-filename -t %s" % url)
vid_fname = path.join(tmp_dir, vid_fname)

run("cd %s && youtube-dl -v -t %s" % (tmp_dir, url))

run("ls %s" % tmp_dir)

import shutil
shutil.rmtree(tmp_dir)