In this Stack Overflow question I asked about creating a Python program of mine which was meant to allow me to access the terminal from a Python shell. It did not work... at least when running the program through startx. But, interestingly enough, when I ran it through ssh (my Pi was running in console mode) the program ran like a charm. The code is below:

import subprocess
import socket
import sys
import platform
import os

print "WELCOME TO xTROL. \n"

pyVER = sys.version
OS = platform.system()

print pyVER, "\n"
print "Running on %s" % (OS)
while True:
    INPUT = raw_input(">>>")
    cmd_FORMAT = INPUT.split()

    try:
        output = subprocess.Popen(cmd_FORMAT, stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
        print output
    except Exception:
        print "Something went wrong."

Why is this?

EDIT

By did not work, I mean that the program did not work interactively. Writing Python in the startx version would return a blank line, in console mode I entered the interactive prompt.

I ran the startx Python program by double clicking on the item, opening idle, and then executing the program.