import subprocess
import shlex

p1 = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split("ifconfig wlan0"),stdout=subprocess.PIPE,stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
p2 = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split("awk '/inet addr:/ {print substr($2,6)}'"),stdin=p1.stdout,stdout=subprocess.PIPE,stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = p2.communicate()
print "out:", out[:-1]
print repr(out[:-1])