code: def count_seeds(usort):
      
      with open(usort, 'r') as insort:
          cmd1 = ["cut", "-f", "2"]
          cmd2 = ["uniq"]
          cmd3 = ["wc"]
          proc1 = sps.Popen(cmd1, stdin=insort, stdout=sps.PIPE, close_fds=True)
          proc2 = sps.Popen(cmd2, stdin=proc1.stdout, stdout=sps.PIPE, close_fds=True)
          proc3 = sps.Popen(cmd3, stdin=proc2.stdout, stdout=sps.PIPE, close_fds=True)
          res = proc3.communicate()
          nseeds = int(res[0].split()[0])
          proc1.stdout.close()
          proc2.stdout.close()
          proc3.stdout.close()
      return nseeds
docs: uses bash commands to quickly count N seeds from utemp file