attempting to run an os.system command under the idle 3 shell swallows the out put.
Idle 3 is running on a 32 bit kde mandriva linux.

>>> import os
>>> os.system('ls')
0
>>> os.system('pwd')
0


as you can see it returns a 0 indicating successful completion, but no output. However os.getcwd works perfectly.

>>> os.getcwd()
'/home/kent/Documents' 

running the same code from python in an xwindow terminal works fine.

apparently the idle shell does not echo the the standard output or error output as the python interpreter does.