How to call a Python script from PowerShell

March 2023

Overview

A quick post to remind me how to call a Python script via PowerShell, passing in an argument and saving the output of the script to a variable in PowerShell using a couple of demo scripts that do nothing more than pass a string to the Python script and return it with text added.

Test machine specs:

Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS
PSVersion 7.3.2
Python 3.10.5 

This should work as is with Python 3.6+ (uses f-string formatting).

I have a virtual environment created with the required Python packages installed. The Python script simply outputs the text I need via the print function and exits.

Here is the Python script that takes an argument and prints it out.

The output can be saved to a variable in PowerShell by calling the script like so.

The PythonProgramPath can either point to the main install of Python (or just Python if it is added to the Path environment variable) or a virtual environment if extra packages are required / installed for the script to run.

I was using this method to work with JWTs. I was struggling to so with PowerShell and already had the Python scripts written so I only had to grab the output of the script to use the JWT values in my PowerShell script.