In IDLE 3 python shell, how to use 'ls' command properly to get proper result

Question

I am using the following command

print Popen(['ls'], stdout=PIPE).communicate()[0]

which outputs

b'pi\ntem\ntemp\n'

P.S. I am using raspberry pi which has Raspbian Linux

Answer 1

You're using Python 3, which differentiates between strings and byte arrays. You need to decode the byte array returned by the communicate() method:

print(Popen(['ls'], stdout=PIPE).communicate()[0].decode('utf-8'))

Some useful information can be found here.