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How to execute executable file in windows and save its output using Python [duplicate]

I want to write a function that will execute a shell command and return its output as a string, no matter, is it an error or success message. I just want to get the same result that I would have gotten with the command line.
What would be a code example that would do such a thing?
For example:
def run_command(cmd):
# ??????
print run_command('mysqladmin create test -uroot -pmysqladmin12')
# Should output something like:
# mysqladmin: CREATE DATABASE failed; error: 'Can't create database 'test'; database exists'

In all officially maintained versions of Python, the simplest approach is to use the subprocess.check_output function:
>>> subprocess.check_output(['ls', '-l'])
b'total 0\n-rw-r--r-- 1 memyself staff 0 Mar 14 11:04 files\n'
check_output runs a single program that takes only arguments as input.1 It returns the result exactly as printed to stdout. If you need to write input to stdin, skip ahead to the run or Popen sections. If you want to execute complex shell commands, see the note on shell=True at the end of this answer.
The check_output function works in all officially maintained versions of Python. But for more recent versions, a more flexible approach is available.
Modern versions of Python (3.5 or higher): run
If you're using Python 3.5+, and do not need backwards compatibility, the new run function is recommended by the official documentation for most tasks. It provides a very general, high-level API for the subprocess module. To capture the output of a program, pass the subprocess.PIPE flag to the stdout keyword argument. Then access the stdout attribute of the returned CompletedProcess object:
>>> import subprocess
>>> result = subprocess.run(['ls', '-l'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
>>> result.stdout
b'total 0\n-rw-r--r-- 1 memyself staff 0 Mar 14 11:04 files\n'
The return value is a bytes object, so if you want a proper string, you'll need to decode it. Assuming the called process returns a UTF-8-encoded string:
>>> result.stdout.decode('utf-8')
'total 0\n-rw-r--r-- 1 memyself staff 0 Mar 14 11:04 files\n'
This can all be compressed to a one-liner if desired:
>>> subprocess.run(['ls', '-l'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE).stdout.decode('utf-8')
'total 0\n-rw-r--r-- 1 memyself staff 0 Mar 14 11:04 files\n'
If you want to pass input to the process's stdin, you can pass a bytes object to the input keyword argument:
>>> cmd = ['awk', 'length($0) > 5']
>>> ip = 'foo\nfoofoo\n'.encode('utf-8')
>>> result = subprocess.run(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, input=ip)
>>> result.stdout.decode('utf-8')
'foofoo\n'
You can capture errors by passing stderr=subprocess.PIPE (capture to result.stderr) or stderr=subprocess.STDOUT (capture to result.stdout along with regular output). If you want run to throw an exception when the process returns a nonzero exit code, you can pass check=True. (Or you can check the returncode attribute of result above.) When security is not a concern, you can also run more complex shell commands by passing shell=True as described at the end of this answer.
Later versions of Python streamline the above further. In Python 3.7+, the above one-liner can be spelled like this:
>>> subprocess.run(['ls', '-l'], capture_output=True, text=True).stdout
'total 0\n-rw-r--r-- 1 memyself staff 0 Mar 14 11:04 files\n'
Using run this way adds just a bit of complexity, compared to the old way of doing things. But now you can do almost anything you need to do with the run function alone.
Older versions of Python (3-3.4): more about check_output
If you are using an older version of Python, or need modest backwards compatibility, you can use the check_output function as briefly described above. It has been available since Python 2.7.
subprocess.check_output(*popenargs, **kwargs)
It takes takes the same arguments as Popen (see below), and returns a string containing the program's output. The beginning of this answer has a more detailed usage example. In Python 3.5+, check_output is equivalent to executing run with check=True and stdout=PIPE, and returning just the stdout attribute.
You can pass stderr=subprocess.STDOUT to ensure that error messages are included in the returned output. When security is not a concern, you can also run more complex shell commands by passing shell=True as described at the end of this answer.
If you need to pipe from stderr or pass input to the process, check_output won't be up to the task. See the Popen examples below in that case.
Complex applications and legacy versions of Python (2.6 and below): Popen
If you need deep backwards compatibility, or if you need more sophisticated functionality than check_output or run provide, you'll have to work directly with Popen objects, which encapsulate the low-level API for subprocesses.
The Popen constructor accepts either a single command without arguments, or a list containing a command as its first item, followed by any number of arguments, each as a separate item in the list. shlex.split can help parse strings into appropriately formatted lists. Popen objects also accept a host of different arguments for process IO management and low-level configuration.
To send input and capture output, communicate is almost always the preferred method. As in:
output = subprocess.Popen(["mycmd", "myarg"],
stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
Or
>>> import subprocess
>>> p = subprocess.Popen(['ls', '-a'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
... stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
>>> out, err = p.communicate()
>>> print out
.
..
foo
If you set stdin=PIPE, communicate also allows you to pass data to the process via stdin:
>>> cmd = ['awk', 'length($0) > 5']
>>> p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
... stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
... stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
>>> out, err = p.communicate('foo\nfoofoo\n')
>>> print out
foofoo
Note Aaron Hall's answer, which indicates that on some systems, you may need to set stdout, stderr, and stdin all to PIPE (or DEVNULL) to get communicate to work at all.
In some rare cases, you may need complex, real-time output capturing. Vartec's answer suggests a way forward, but methods other than communicate are prone to deadlocks if not used carefully.
As with all the above functions, when security is not a concern, you can run more complex shell commands by passing shell=True.
Notes
1. Running shell commands: the shell=True argument
Normally, each call to run, check_output, or the Popen constructor executes a single program. That means no fancy bash-style pipes. If you want to run complex shell commands, you can pass shell=True, which all three functions support. For example:
>>> subprocess.check_output('cat books/* | wc', shell=True, text=True)
' 1299377 17005208 101299376\n'
However, doing this raises security concerns. If you're doing anything more than light scripting, you might be better off calling each process separately, and passing the output from each as an input to the next, via
run(cmd, [stdout=etc...], input=other_output)
Or
Popen(cmd, [stdout=etc...]).communicate(other_output)
The temptation to directly connect pipes is strong; resist it. Otherwise, you'll likely see deadlocks or have to do hacky things like this.

This is way easier, but only works on Unix (including Cygwin) and Python2.7.
import commands
print commands.getstatusoutput('wc -l file')
It returns a tuple with the (return_value, output).
For a solution that works in both Python2 and Python3, use the subprocess module instead:
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
output = Popen(["date"],stdout=PIPE)
response = output.communicate()
print response

I had the same problem but figured out a very simple way of doing this:
import subprocess
output = subprocess.getoutput("ls -l")
print(output)
Note: This solution is Python3 specific as subprocess.getoutput() doesn't work in Python2

Something like that:
def runProcess(exe):
p = subprocess.Popen(exe, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
while(True):
# returns None while subprocess is running
retcode = p.poll()
line = p.stdout.readline()
yield line
if retcode is not None:
break
Note, that I'm redirecting stderr to stdout, it might not be exactly what you want, but I want error messages also.
This function yields line by line as they come (normally you'd have to wait for subprocess to finish to get the output as a whole).
For your case the usage would be:
for line in runProcess('mysqladmin create test -uroot -pmysqladmin12'.split()):
print line,

This is a tricky but super simple solution which works in many situations:
import os
os.system('sample_cmd > tmp')
print(open('tmp', 'r').read())
A temporary file(here is tmp) is created with the output of the command and you can read from it your desired output.
Extra note from the comments:
You can remove the tmp file in the case of one-time job. If you need to do this several times, there is no need to delete the tmp.
os.remove('tmp')

Vartec's answer doesn't read all lines, so I made a version that did:
def run_command(command):
p = subprocess.Popen(command,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
return iter(p.stdout.readline, b'')
Usage is the same as the accepted answer:
command = 'mysqladmin create test -uroot -pmysqladmin12'.split()
for line in run_command(command):
print(line)

You can use following commands to run any shell command. I have used them on ubuntu.
import os
os.popen('your command here').read()
Note: This is deprecated since python 2.6. Now you must use subprocess.Popen. Below is the example
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen("Your command", shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
print p.split("\n")

I had a slightly different flavor of the same problem with the following requirements:
Capture and return STDOUT messages as they accumulate in the STDOUT buffer (i.e. in realtime).
#vartec solved this Pythonically with his use of generators and the 'yield'
keyword above
Print all STDOUT lines (even if process exits before STDOUT buffer can be fully read)
Don't waste CPU cycles polling the process at high-frequency
Check the return code of the subprocess
Print STDERR (separate from STDOUT) if we get a non-zero error return code.
I've combined and tweaked previous answers to come up with the following:
import subprocess
from time import sleep
def run_command(command):
p = subprocess.Popen(command,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
shell=True)
# Read stdout from subprocess until the buffer is empty !
for line in iter(p.stdout.readline, b''):
if line: # Don't print blank lines
yield line
# This ensures the process has completed, AND sets the 'returncode' attr
while p.poll() is None:
sleep(.1) #Don't waste CPU-cycles
# Empty STDERR buffer
err = p.stderr.read()
if p.returncode != 0:
# The run_command() function is responsible for logging STDERR
print("Error: " + str(err))
This code would be executed the same as previous answers:
for line in run_command(cmd):
print(line)

Your Mileage May Vary, I attempted #senderle's spin on Vartec's solution in Windows on Python 2.6.5, but I was getting errors, and no other solutions worked. My error was: WindowsError: [Error 6] The handle is invalid.
I found that I had to assign PIPE to every handle to get it to return the output I expected - the following worked for me.
import subprocess
def run_command(cmd):
"""given shell command, returns communication tuple of stdout and stderr"""
return subprocess.Popen(cmd,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
stdin=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()
and call like this, ([0] gets the first element of the tuple, stdout):
run_command('tracert 11.1.0.1')[0]
After learning more, I believe I need these pipe arguments because I'm working on a custom system that uses different handles, so I had to directly control all the std's.
To stop console popups (with Windows), do this:
def run_command(cmd):
"""given shell command, returns communication tuple of stdout and stderr"""
# instantiate a startupinfo obj:
startupinfo = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
# set the use show window flag, might make conditional on being in Windows:
startupinfo.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
# pass as the startupinfo keyword argument:
return subprocess.Popen(cmd,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
startupinfo=startupinfo).communicate()
run_command('tracert 11.1.0.1')

On Python 3.7+, use subprocess.run and pass capture_output=True:
import subprocess
result = subprocess.run(['echo', 'hello', 'world'], capture_output=True)
print(repr(result.stdout))
This will return bytes:
b'hello world\n'
If you want it to convert the bytes to a string, add text=True:
result = subprocess.run(['echo', 'hello', 'world'], capture_output=True, text=True)
print(repr(result.stdout))
This will read the bytes using your default encoding:
'hello world\n'
If you need to manually specify a different encoding, use encoding="your encoding" instead of text=True:
result = subprocess.run(['echo', 'hello', 'world'], capture_output=True, encoding="utf8")
print(repr(result.stdout))

Splitting the initial command for the subprocess might be tricky and cumbersome.
Use shlex.split() to help yourself out.
Sample command
git log -n 5 --since "5 years ago" --until "2 year ago"
The code
from subprocess import check_output
from shlex import split
res = check_output(split('git log -n 5 --since "5 years ago" --until "2 year ago"'))
print(res)
>>> b'commit 7696ab087a163e084d6870bb4e5e4d4198bdc61a\nAuthor: Artur Barseghyan...'
Without shlex.split() the code would look as follows
res = check_output([
'git',
'log',
'-n',
'5',
'--since',
'5 years ago',
'--until',
'2 year ago'
])
print(res)
>>> b'commit 7696ab087a163e084d6870bb4e5e4d4198bdc61a\nAuthor: Artur Barseghyan...'

Here a solution, working if you want to print output while process is running or not.
I added the current working directory also, it was useful to me more than once.
Hoping the solution will help someone :).
import subprocess
def run_command(cmd_and_args, print_constantly=False, cwd=None):
"""Runs a system command.
:param cmd_and_args: the command to run with or without a Pipe (|).
:param print_constantly: If True then the output is logged in continuous until the command ended.
:param cwd: the current working directory (the directory from which you will like to execute the command)
:return: - a tuple containing the return code, the stdout and the stderr of the command
"""
output = []
process = subprocess.Popen(cmd_and_args, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, cwd=cwd)
while True:
next_line = process.stdout.readline()
if next_line:
output.append(str(next_line))
if print_constantly:
print(next_line)
elif not process.poll():
break
error = process.communicate()[1]
return process.returncode, '\n'.join(output), error

For some reason, this one works on Python 2.7 and you only need to import os!
import os
def bash(command):
output = os.popen(command).read()
return output
print_me = bash('ls -l')
print(print_me)

If you need to run a shell command on multiple files, this did the trick for me.
import os
import subprocess
# Define a function for running commands and capturing stdout line by line
# (Modified from Vartec's solution because it wasn't printing all lines)
def runProcess(exe):
p = subprocess.Popen(exe, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
return iter(p.stdout.readline, b'')
# Get all filenames in working directory
for filename in os.listdir('./'):
# This command will be run on each file
cmd = 'nm ' + filename
# Run the command and capture the output line by line.
for line in runProcess(cmd.split()):
# Eliminate leading and trailing whitespace
line.strip()
# Split the output
output = line.split()
# Filter the output and print relevant lines
if len(output) > 2:
if ((output[2] == 'set_program_name')):
print filename
print line
Edit: Just saw Max Persson's solution with J.F. Sebastian's suggestion. Went ahead and incorporated that.

According to #senderle, if you use python3.6 like me:
def sh(cmd, input=""):
rst = subprocess.run(cmd, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, input=input.encode("utf-8"))
assert rst.returncode == 0, rst.stderr.decode("utf-8")
return rst.stdout.decode("utf-8")
sh("ls -a")
Will act exactly like you run the command in bash

Improvement for better logging.
For better output you can use iterator.
From below, we get better
from subprocess import Popen, getstatusoutput, PIPE
def shell_command(cmd):
result = Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
output = iter(result.stdout.readline, b'')
error = iter(result.stderr.readline, b'')
print("##### OutPut ###")
for line in output:
print(line.decode("utf-8"))
print("###### Error ########")
for line in error:
print(error.decode("utf-8")) # Convert bytes to str
status, terminal_output = run_command(cmd)
print(terminal_output)
shell_command("ls") # this will display all the files & folders in directory
Other method using getstatusoutput ( Easy to understand)
from subprocess import Popen, getstatusoutput, PIPE
status_Code, output = getstausoutput(command)
print(output) # this will give the terminal output
# status_code, output = getstatusoutput("ls") # this will print the all files & folder available in the directory

If you use the subprocess python module, you are able to handle the STDOUT, STDERR and return code of command separately. You can see an example for the complete command caller implementation. Of course you can extend it with try..except if you want.
The below function returns the STDOUT, STDERR and Return code so you can handle them in the other script.
import subprocess
def command_caller(command=None)
sp = subprocess.Popen(command, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=False)
out, err = sp.communicate()
if sp.returncode:
print(
"Return code: %(ret_code)s Error message: %(err_msg)s"
% {"ret_code": sp.returncode, "err_msg": err}
)
return sp.returncode, out, err

I would like to suggest simppl as an option for consideration. It is a module that is available via pypi: pip install simppl and was runs on python3.
simppl allows the user to run shell commands and read the output from the screen.
The developers suggest three types of use cases:
The simplest usage will look like this:
from simppl.simple_pipeline import SimplePipeline
sp = SimplePipeline(start=0, end=100):
sp.print_and_run('<YOUR_FIRST_OS_COMMAND>')
sp.print_and_run('<YOUR_SECOND_OS_COMMAND>') ```
To run multiple commands concurrently use:
commands = ['<YOUR_FIRST_OS_COMMAND>', '<YOUR_SECOND_OS_COMMAND>']
max_number_of_processes = 4
sp.run_parallel(commands, max_number_of_processes) ```
Finally, if your project uses the cli module, you can run directly another command_line_tool as part of a pipeline. The other tool will
be run from the same process, but it will appear from the logs as
another command in the pipeline. This enables smoother debugging and
refactoring of tools calling other tools.
from example_module import example_tool
sp.print_and_run_clt(example_tool.run, ['first_number', 'second_nmber'],
{'-key1': 'val1', '-key2': 'val2'},
{'--flag'}) ```
Note that the printing to STDOUT/STDERR is via python's logging module.
Here is a complete code to show how simppl works:
import logging
from logging.config import dictConfig
logging_config = dict(
version = 1,
formatters = {
'f': {'format':
'%(asctime)s %(name)-12s %(levelname)-8s %(message)s'}
},
handlers = {
'h': {'class': 'logging.StreamHandler',
'formatter': 'f',
'level': logging.DEBUG}
},
root = {
'handlers': ['h'],
'level': logging.DEBUG,
},
)
dictConfig(logging_config)
from simppl.simple_pipeline import SimplePipeline
sp = SimplePipeline(0, 100)
sp.print_and_run('ls')

Here is a simple and flexible solution that works on a variety of OS versions, and both Python 2 and 3, using IPython in shell mode:
from IPython.terminal.embed import InteractiveShellEmbed
my_shell = InteractiveShellEmbed()
result = my_shell.getoutput("echo hello world")
print(result)
Out: ['hello world']
It has a couple of advantages
It only requires an IPython install, so you don't really need to worry about your specific Python or OS version when using it, it comes with Jupyter - which has a wide range of support
It takes a simple string by default - so no need to use shell mode arg or string splitting, making it slightly cleaner IMO
It also makes it cleaner to easily substitute variables or even entire Python commands in the string itself
To demonstrate:
var = "hello world "
result = my_shell.getoutput("echo {var*2}")
print(result)
Out: ['hello world hello world']
Just wanted to give you an extra option, especially if you already have Jupyter installed
Naturally, if you are in an actual Jupyter notebook as opposed to a .py script you can also always do:
result = !echo hello world
print(result)
To accomplish the same.

The output can be redirected to a text file and then read it back.
import subprocess
import os
import tempfile
def execute_to_file(command):
"""
This function execute the command
and pass its output to a tempfile then read it back
It is usefull for process that deploy child process
"""
temp_file = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(delete=False)
temp_file.close()
path = temp_file.name
command = command + " > " + path
proc = subprocess.run(command, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, universal_newlines=True)
if proc.stderr:
# if command failed return
os.unlink(path)
return
with open(path, 'r') as f:
data = f.read()
os.unlink(path)
return data
if __name__ == "__main__":
path = "Somepath"
command = 'ecls.exe /files ' + path
print(execute(command))

eg, execute('ls -ahl')
differentiated three/four possible returns and OS platforms:
no output, but run successfully
output empty line, run successfully
run failed
output something, run successfully
function below
def execute(cmd, output=True, DEBUG_MODE=False):
"""Executes a bash command.
(cmd, output=True)
output: whether print shell output to screen, only affects screen display, does not affect returned values
return: ...regardless of output=True/False...
returns shell output as a list with each elment is a line of string (whitespace stripped both sides) from output
could be
[], ie, len()=0 --> no output;
[''] --> output empty line;
None --> error occured, see below
if error ocurs, returns None (ie, is None), print out the error message to screen
"""
if not DEBUG_MODE:
print "Command: " + cmd
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/40139101/2292993
def _execute_cmd(cmd):
if os.name == 'nt' or platform.system() == 'Windows':
# set stdin, out, err all to PIPE to get results (other than None) after run the Popen() instance
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
else:
# Use bash; the default is sh
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True, executable="/bin/bash")
# the Popen() instance starts running once instantiated (??)
# additionally, communicate(), or poll() and wait process to terminate
# communicate() accepts optional input as stdin to the pipe (requires setting stdin=subprocess.PIPE above), return out, err as tuple
# if communicate(), the results are buffered in memory
# Read stdout from subprocess until the buffer is empty !
# if error occurs, the stdout is '', which means the below loop is essentially skipped
# A prefix of 'b' or 'B' is ignored in Python 2;
# it indicates that the literal should become a bytes literal in Python 3
# (e.g. when code is automatically converted with 2to3).
# return iter(p.stdout.readline, b'')
for line in iter(p.stdout.readline, b''):
# # Windows has \r\n, Unix has \n, Old mac has \r
# if line not in ['','\n','\r','\r\n']: # Don't print blank lines
yield line
while p.poll() is None:
sleep(.1) #Don't waste CPU-cycles
# Empty STDERR buffer
err = p.stderr.read()
if p.returncode != 0:
# responsible for logging STDERR
print("Error: " + str(err))
yield None
out = []
for line in _execute_cmd(cmd):
# error did not occur earlier
if line is not None:
# trailing comma to avoid a newline (by print itself) being printed
if output: print line,
out.append(line.strip())
else:
# error occured earlier
out = None
return out
else:
print "Simulation! The command is " + cmd
print ""

Python subprocess call to xpdf's pdftotext not working with encoding

I am trying to run pdftotext using python subprocess module.
import subprocess
pdf = r"path\to\file.pdf"
txt = r"path\to\out.txt"
pdftotext = r"path\to\pdftotext.exe"
cmd = [pdftotext, pdf, txt, '-enc UTF-8']
response = subprocess.check_output(cmd,
shell=True,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
TB
CalledProcessError: Command '['path\\to\\pdftotext.exe',
'path\\to\\file.pdf', 'path\\to\\out.txt', '-enc UTF-8']'
returned non-zero exit status 99
When I remove last argument '-enc UTF-8' from cmd, it works OK in python.
When I run pdftotext pdf txt -enc UTF-8 in cmd, it works ok.
What I am missing?
Thanks.

subprocess has some complicated rules for handling commands. From the docs:
The shell argument (which defaults to False) specifies whether to use
the shell as the program to execute. If shell is True, it is
recommended to pass args as a string rather than as a sequence.
More details explained in this answer here.
So, as the docs explain, you should convert your command to a string:
cmd = r"""{} "{}" "{}" -enc UTF-8""".format('pdftotext', pdf, txt)
Now, call subprocess as:
subprocess.call(cmd, shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

python subprocess is working in interactive mode but in not script

In windows I have to execute a command like below:
process = subprocess.Popen([r'C:\Program Files (x86)\xxx\xxx.exe', '-n', '#iseasn2a7.sd.xxxx.com:3944#dc', '-d', r'D:\test\file.txt'], shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
process.communicate()
This works fine in python interactive mode, but not at all executing from the python script.
What may be the issue ?

Popen.communicate itself does not print anything, but it returns the stdout, stderr output. Beside that because the code specified stdout=PIPE, stderr=... when it create Popen, it catch the outputs (does not let the sub-process print output directly to the stdout of the parent process)
You need to print the return value manually:
process = ....
output, error = process.communicate()
print output
If you don't want that, don't catch stdout output by omit stdout=PIPE, stderr=....
Then, you don't need to use communicate, but just wait:
process = subprocess.Popen([...], shell=True)
process.wait()
Or, you can use subprocess.call which both execute sub-process and wait its termination:
subprocess.call([...], shell=True)

Python subprocess.Popen() followed by time.sleep

I want to make a python script that will convert a TEX file to PDF and then open the output file with my document viewer.
I first tried the following:
import subprocess
subprocess.Popen(['xelatex', '--output-directory=Alunos/', 'Alunos/' + aluno + '_pratica.tex'], shell=False, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
subprocess.Popen(['gnome-open', 'Alunos/'+aluno+'_pratica.pdf'], shell=False)
This way, the conversion from TEX to PDF works all right, but, as it takes some time, the second command (open file with Document Viewer) is executed before the output file is created.
So, I tried do make the program wait some seconds before executing the second command. Here's what I've done:
import subprocess
import time
subprocess.Popen(['xelatex', '--output-directory=Alunos/', 'Alunos/' + aluno + '_pratica.tex'], shell=False, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
time.sleep(10)
subprocess.Popen(['gnome-open', 'Alunos/'+aluno+'_pratica.pdf'], shell=False)
But, when I do so, the output PDF file is not created. I can't understand why. The only change was the time.sleep command. Why does it affect the Popen process?
Could anyone give me some help?
EDIT:
I've followed the advice from Faust and Paulo Bu and in both cases the result is the same.
When I run this command...
subprocess.call('xelatex --output-directory=Alunos/ Alunos/{}_pratica.tex'.format(aluno), shell=True)
... or this...
p = subprocess.Popen(['xelatex', '--output-directory=Alunos/', 'Alunos/' + aluno + '_pratica.tex'], shell=False, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
p.wait()
...the Xelatex program is run but doesn't make the conversion.
Strangely, when I run the command directly in the shell...
$ xelatex --output-directory=Alunos/ Alunos/name_pratica.tex
... the conversion works perfectly.
Here's what I get when I run the subprocess.call() command:
$ python my_file.py
Enter name:
name
This is XeTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.4-0.9998 (TeX Live 2012/Debian)
restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./Alunos/name_pratica.tex
LaTeX2e <2011/06/27>
Babel <v3.8m> and hyphenation patterns for english, dumylang, nohyphenation, loaded.
)
*
When I write the command directly in the shell, the output is the same, but it followed automatically by the conversion.
Does anyone know why it happens this way?
PS: sorry for the bad formating. I don't know how to post the shell output properly.

If you need to wait the termination of the program and you are not interested in its output you should use subprocess.call
import subprocess
subprocess.call(['xelatex', '--output-directory=Alunos/', 'Alunos/{}_pratica.tex'.format(aluno)])
subprocess.call([('gnome-open', 'Alunos/{}_pratica.pdf'.format(aluno)])
EDIT:
Also it is generally a good thing to use English when you have to name variables or functions.

If xelatex command works in a shell but fails when you call it from Python then xelatex might be blocked on output in your Python code. You do not read the pipes despite setting stdout/stderr to PIPE. On my machine the pipe buffer is 64KB therefore if xelatex output size is less then it should not block.
You could redirect the output to os.devnull instead:
import os
import webbrowser
from subprocess import STDOUT, check_call
try:
from subprocess import DEVNULL # py3k
except ImportError:
DEVNULL = open(os.devnull, 'w+b')
basename = aluno + '_pratica'
output_dir = 'Alunos'
root = os.path.join(output_dir, basename)
check_call(['xelatex', '--output-directory', output_dir, root+'.tex'],
stdin=DEVNULL, stdout=DEVNULL, stderr=STDOUT)
webbrowser.open(root+'.pdf')
check_call is used to wait for xelatex and raise an exception on error.

Not able to give inputs to subprocess(process which runs adb shell command) after 100 iterations

I want to run a stress test for adb(android debug bridge) shell. ( adb shell in this respect just a command line tool provided by Android phones).
I create a sub-process from python and in this subprocess i execute 'adb shell' command. there are some commands which has to be given to this subprocess which I am providing via stdin proper of the sub process.
Everything seems to be fine but when I am running a stress test. after around 100 iterations the command which I give to stdin does not reach to subprocess. If I run commands in separate terminal it is running fine. but the problem is with this stdin.
Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong. Below is the code sample
class ADB():
def __init__(self):
self.proc = subprocess.Popen('adb shell', stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, shell=True,bufsize=0)
def provideAMcommand(self, testParam):
try:
cmd1 = "am startservice -n com.test.myapp/.ADBSupport -e \"" + "command" + "\" \"" + "test" + "\""
cmd2 = " -e \"" + "param" + "\"" + " " + testParam
print cmd1+cmd2
sys.stdout.flush()
self.proc.stdin.write(cmd1 + cmd2 + "\n")
except:
raise Exception("Phone is not Connected to Desktop or ADB is not available \n")

If it works for the first few commands but blocks later then you might forgot to read from self.proc.stdout that might lead to (as the docs warn) to OS pipe buffer filling up and blocking the child process.
To discard the output, redirect it to os.devnull:
import os
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE, STDOUT
DEVNULL = open(os.devnull, 'wb')
# ...
self.proc = Popen(['adb', 'shell'], stdin=PIPE, stdout=DEVNULL, stderr=STDOUT)
# ...
self.proc.stdin.write(cmd1 + cmd2 + "\n")
self.proc.stdin.flush()
There is pexpect module that might be a better tool for a dialog-based interaction (if you want both read/write intermitently).

IN provideAMcommand you are writing to and flushing the stdout of your main process. That will not send anything to the stdin of the child process you have created with Popen. The following code creates a new bash child process, a bit like the code in your __init__:
import subprocess as sp
cproc = sp.Popen("bash", stdin=sp.PIPE, stdout=sp.PIPE, stderr=sp.PIPE, shell=True)
Now, the easiest way to communicate with that child process is the following:
#Send command 'ls' to bash.
out, err = cproc.communicate("ls")
This will send the text "ls" and EOF to bash (equal to running a bash script with only the text "ls" in it). Bash will execute the ls command and then quit. Anything that bash or ls write to stdout and stderr will end up in the variables out and err respectively. I have not used the adb shell, but I guess it behaves like bash in this regard.
If you just want your child process to print to the terminal, don't specify the stdout and stderr arguments to Popen.
You can check the exit code of the child, and raise an exception if it is non-zero (indicating an error):
if (cproc.returncode != 0):
raise Exception("Child process returned non-zero exit code")