On 2015-06-12, Grawburg <grawb...@myglnc.com> wrote: > I have a piece of code written for a Raspberry Pi with no explanation for two > of the lines -- and I can't find an explanation I understand. > > Here are the lines: > if os.system('modprobe --first-time -q w1_gpio') ==0 > > if os.system('modprobe -q w1_gpio') == 256: > > I know what the 'modprobe...' is, it's the 0 and the 256 I don't get. > Where do these numbers come from? I recognize they're some kind of > error returns, but don't know what they mean.
In generail, Linux command line utilities return 0 to indicate success/OK/true. They return non-zero to indicate failure/error/false. The status you get back from os.system() on linux is a 16-bit number with the the upper 8 bits the return value from the command and the lower 8 bits the signal number that terminated the sub-process (0 means normal exit). So os.system() will return 0 if the command it invoked executed successfully and returned a 0, and os.system() returns 256 if the command it invoked returned a 1. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! Did I say I was at a sardine? Or a bus??? gmail.com -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list