Given this code snippet:
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE, CalledProcessError
def execute(cmd):
with Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdout=PIPE, bufsize=1, universal_newlines=True) as p:
for line in p.stdout:
print(line, end='')
if p.returncode != 0:
raise CalledProcessError(p.returncode, p.args)
base_cmd = [
"cmd", "/c", "d:\\virtual_envs\\py362_32\\Scripts\\activate",
"&&"
]
cmd1 = " ".join(base_cmd + ['python -c "import sys; print(sys.version)"'])
cmd2 = " ".join(base_cmd + ["python -m http.server"])
If I run execute(cmd1) the output will be printed without any problems.
However, If I run execute(cmd2) instead nothing will be printed, why is that and how can I fix it so I could see the http.server's output in real time.
Also, how for line in p.stdout is been evaluated internally? is it some sort of endless loop till reaches stdout eof or something?
This topic has already been addressed few times here in SO but I haven't found a windows solution. The above snippet is code from this answer and I'm running http.server from a virtualenv (python3.6.2-32bits on win7)
If you want to read continuously from a running subprocess, you have to make that process' output unbuffered. Your subprocess being a Python program, this can be done by passing -u to the interpreter:
python -u -m http.server
This is how it looks on a Windows box.
With this code, you can`t see the real-time output because of buffering:
for line in p.stdout:
print(line, end='')
But if you use p.stdout.readline() it should work:
while True:
line = p.stdout.readline()
if not line: break
print(line, end='')
See corresponding python bug discussion for details
UPD: here you can find almost the same problem with various solutions on stackoverflow.
I think the main problem is that http.server somehow is logging the output to stderr, here I have an example with asyncio, reading the data either from stdout or stderr.
My first attempt was to use asyncio, a nice API, which exists in since Python 3.4. Later I found a simpler solution, so you can choose, both of em should work.
asyncio as solution
In the background asyncio is using IOCP - a windows API to async stuff.
# inspired by https://pymotw.com/3/asyncio/subprocesses.html
import asyncio
import sys
import time
if sys.platform == 'win32':
loop = asyncio.ProactorEventLoop()
asyncio.set_event_loop(loop)
async def run_webserver():
buffer = bytearray()
# start the webserver without buffering (-u) and stderr and stdin as the arguments
print('launching process')
proc = await asyncio.create_subprocess_exec(
sys.executable, '-u', '-mhttp.server',
stdout=asyncio.subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=asyncio.subprocess.PIPE
)
print('process started {}'.format(proc.pid))
while 1:
# wait either for stderr or stdout and loop over the results
for line in asyncio.as_completed([proc.stderr.readline(), proc.stdout.readline()]):
print('read {!r}'.format(await line))
event_loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
try:
event_loop.run_until_complete(run_df())
finally:
event_loop.close()
redirecting the from stdout
based on your example this is a really simple solution. It just redirects the stderr to stdout and only stdout is read.
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE, CalledProcessError, run, STDOUT import os
def execute(cmd):
with Popen(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=STDOUT, bufsize=1) as p:
while 1:
print('waiting for a line')
print(p.stdout.readline())
cmd2 = ["python", "-u", "-m", "http.server"]
execute(cmd2)
How for line in p.stdout is been evaluated internally? is it some sort of endless loop till reaches stdout eof or something?
p.stdout is a buffer (blocking). When you are reading from an empty buffer, you are blocked until something is written to that buffer. Once something is in it, you get the data and execute the inner part.
Think of how tail -f works on linux: it waits until something is written to the file, and when it does it echo's the new data to the screen. What happens when there is no data? it waits. So when your program gets to this line, it waits for data and process it.
As your code works, but when run as a model not, it has to be related to this somehow. The http.server module probably buffers the output. Try adding -u parameter to Python to run the process as unbuffered:
-u : unbuffered binary stdout and stderr; also PYTHONUNBUFFERED=x
see man page for details on internal buffering relating to '-u'
Also, you might want to try change your loop to for line in iter(lambda: p.stdout.read(1), ''):, as this reads 1 byte at a time before processing.
Update: The full loop code is
for line in iter(lambda: p.stdout.read(1), ''):
sys.stdout.write(line)
sys.stdout.flush()
Also, you pass your command as a string. Try passing it as a list, with each element in its own slot:
cmd = ['python', '-m', 'http.server', ..]
You could implement the no-buffer behavior at the OS level.
In Linux, you could wrap your existing command line with stdbuf :
stdbuf -i0 -o0 -e0 YOURCOMMAND
Or in Windows, you could wrap your existing command line with winpty:
winpty.exe -Xallow-non-tty -Xplain YOURCOMMAND
I'm not aware of OS-neutral tools for this.
Related
I have a cmd file "file.cmd" containing 100s of lines of command.
Example
pandoc --extract-media -f docx -t gfm "sample1.docx" -o "sample1.md"
pandoc --extract-media -f docx -t gfm "sample2.docx" -o "sample2.md"
pandoc --extract-media -f docx -t gfm "sample3.docx" -o "sample3.md"
I am trying to run these commands using a script so that I don't have to go to a file and click on it.
This is my code, and it results in no output:
file1 = open('example.cmd', 'r')
Lines = file1.readlines()
# print(Lines)
for i in Lines:
print(i)
os.system(i)
You don't need to read the cmd file line by line. you can simply try the following:
import os
os.system('myfile.cmd')
or using the subprocess module:
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen(['myfile.cmd'], shell = True, close_fds = True)
stdout, stderr = proc.communicate()
Example:
myfile.cmd:
#ECHO OFF
ECHO Grettings From Python!
PAUSE
script.py:
import os
os.system('myfile.cmd')
The cmd will open with:
Greetings From Python!
Press any key to continue ...
You can debug the issue by knowing the return exit code by:
import os
return_code=os.system('myfile.cmd')
assert return_code == 0 #asserts that the return code is 0 indicating success!
Note: os.system works by calling system() in C can only take up to 65533 arguments after a command (so it is a 16 bit issue). Giving one more argument will result in the return code 32512 (which implies the exit code 127).
The subprocess module provides more powerful facilities for spawning new processes and retrieving their results; using that module is preferable to using this function (os.system('command')).
since it is a command file (cmd), and only the shell can run it, then shell argument must set to be true. since you are setting the shell argument to true, the command needs to be string form and not a list.
use the Popen method for spawn a new process and the communicte for waiting on that process (you can time it out as well). if you whish to communicate with the child process, provide the PIPES (see mu example, but you dont have to!)
the code below for python 3.3 and beyond
import subprocess
try:
proc=subprocess.Popen('myfile.cmd', shell=True, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
outs, errs = proc.communicate(timeout=15) #timing out the execution, just if you want, you dont have to!
except TimeoutExpired:
proc.kill()
outs, errs = proc.communicate()
for older python versions
proc = subprocess.Popen('myfile.cmd', shell=True)
t=10
while proc.poll() is None and t >= 0:
print('Still waiting')
time.sleep(1)
t -= 1
proc.kill()
In both cases (python versions) if you dont need the timeout feature and you dont need to interact with the child process, then just, use:
proc = subprocess.Popen('myfile.cmd', shell=True)
proc.communicate()
I am new to Python.
I am trying to SSH to a server to perform some operations. However, before performing the operations, i need to load a profile, which takes 60-90 seconds. After loading the profile, is there a way to keep the SSH session open so that i can perform the operations later?
p = subprocess.Popen("ssh abc#xyz'./profile'", stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
result = p.communicate()[0]
print result
return result
This loads the profile and exits. Is there a way to keep the above ssh session open and run some commands?
Example:
p = subprocess.Popen("ssh abc#xyz'./profile'", stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
<More Python Code>
<More Python Code>
<More Python Code>
<Run some scripts/commands on xyz server non-interactively>
After loading the profile, I want to run some scripts/commands on the remote server, which I am able to do by simply doing below:
p = subprocess.Popen("ssh abc#xyz './profile;**<./a.py;etc>**'", stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
However, once done, it exists and the next time I want to execute some script on the above server, I need to load the profile again (which takes 60-90 seconds). I am trying to figure out a way where we can create some sort of tunnel (or any other way) where the ssh connection remains open after loading the profile, so that the users don't have to wait 60-90 seconds whenever anything is to be executed.
I don't have access to strip down the profile.
Try an ssh library like asyncssh or spur. Keeping the connection object should keep the session open.
You could send a dummy command like date to prevent the timeout as well.
You have to construct a ssh command like this ['ssh', '-T', 'host_user_name#host_address'] then follow below code.
Code:
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
ssh_conn = ['ssh', '-T', 'host_user_name#host_address']
# if you have to add port then ssh_conn should be as following
# ssh_conn = ['ssh', '-T', 'host_user_name#host_address', '-p', 'port']
commands = """
cd Documents/
ls -l
cat test.txt
"""
with Popen(ssh_conn, stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, universal_newlines=True) as p:
output, error = p.communicate(commands)
print(output)
print(error)
print(p.returncode)
# or can do following things
p.stdin.write('command_1')
# add as many command as you want
p.stdin.write('command_n')
Terminal Output:
Please let me know if you need further explanations.
N.B: You can add command in commands string as many as you want.
What you want to do is write/read to the process's stdin/stdout.
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
import shlex
shell_command = "ssh user#address"
proc = Popen(shlex.split(shell_command), stdin=PIPE, universal_newlines=True)
# Do python stuff here
proc.stdin.write("cd Desktop\n")
proc.stdin.write("mkdir Example\n")
# And so on
proc.stdin.write("exit\n")
You must include the trailing newline for each command. If you prefer, print() (as of Python 3.x, where it is a function) takes a keyword argument file, which allows you to forget about that newline (and also gain all the benefits of print()).
print("rm Example", file=proc.stdin)
Additionally, if you need to see the output of your command, you can pass stdout=PIPE and then read via proc.stdout.read() (same for stderr).
You may also want to but the exit command in a try/finally block, to ensure you exit the ssh session gracefully.
Note that a) read is blocking, so if there's no output, it'll block forever and b) it will only return what was available to read from the stdout at that time- so you may need to read repeatedly, sleep for a short time, or poll for additional data. See the fnctl and select stdlib modules for changing blocking -> nonblocking read and polling for events, respectively.
Hello Koshur!
I think that what you are trying to achieve looks like what I've tried in the past when trying to make my terminal accessible from a private website:
I would open a bash instance, keep it open and would listen for commands through a WebSocket connection.
What I did to achieve this was using the O_NONBLOCK flag on STDOUT.
Example
import fcntl
import os
import shlex
import subprocess
current_process = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split("/bin/sh"), stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT) # Open a shell prompt
fcntl.fcntl(current_process.stdout.fileno(), fcntl.F_SETFL,
os.O_NONBLOCK) # Non blocking stdout and stderr reading
What I would have after this is a loop checking for new output in another thread:
from time import sleep
from threading import Thread
def check_output(process):
"""
Checks the output of stdout and stderr to send it to the WebSocket client
"""
while process.poll() is None: # while the process isn't exited
try:
output = process.stdout.read() # Read the stdout PIPE (which contains stdout and stderr)
except Exception:
output = None
if output:
print(output)
sleep(.1)
# from here, we are outside the loop: the process exited
print("Process exited with return code: {code}".format(code=process.returncode))
Thread(target=check_output, args=(current_process,), daemon=True).start() # Start checking for new text in stdout and stderr
So you would need to implement your logic to SSH when starting the process:
current_process = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split("ssh abc#xyz'./profile'"), stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
And send commands like so:
def send_command(process, cmd):
process.stdin.write(str(cmd + "\n").encode("utf-8")) # Write the input to STDIN
process.stdin.flush() # Run the command
send_command(current_process, "echo Hello")
EDIT
I tried to see the minimum Python requirements for the given examples and found out that Thread(daemon) might not work on Python 2.7, which you asked in the tags.
If you are sure to exit the Thread before exiting, you can ignore daemon and use Thread() which works on 2.7. (You could for example use atexit and terminate the process)
References
fcntl(2) man page
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/fcntl.2.html
fcntl Python 3 Documentation
https://docs.python.org/3/library/fcntl.html
fcntl Python 2.7 Documentation
https://docs.python.org/2.7/library/fcntl.html
O_NONBLOCK Python 3 Documentation
https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.O_NONBLOCK
O_NONBLOCK Python 2.7 Documentation
https://docs.python.org/2.7/library/os.html#os.O_NONBLOCK
I want output from execute Test_Pipe.py, I tried following code on Linux but it did not work.
Test_Pipe.py
import time
while True :
print "Someting ..."
time.sleep(.1)
Caller.py
import subprocess as subp
import time
proc = subp.Popen(["python", "Test_Pipe.py"], stdout=subp.PIPE, stdin=subp.PIPE)
while True :
data = proc.stdout.readline() #block / wait
print data
time.sleep(.1)
The line proc.stdout.readline() was blocked, so no data prints out.
You obviously can use subprocess.communicate but I think you are looking for real time input and output.
readline was blocked because the process is probably waiting on your input. You can read character by character to overcome this like the following:
import subprocess
import sys
process = subprocess.Popen(
cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE
)
while True:
out = process.stdout.read(1)
if out == '' and process.poll() != None:
break
if out != '':
sys.stdout.write(out)
sys.stdout.flush()
Nadia's snippet does work but calling read with a 1 byte buffer is highly unrecommended. The better way to do this would be to set the stdout file descriptor to nonblocking using fcntl
fcntl.fcntl(
proc.stdout.fileno(),
fcntl.F_SETFL,
fcntl.fcntl(proc.stdout.fileno(), fcntl.F_GETFL) | os.O_NONBLOCK,
)
and then using select to test if the data is ready
while proc.poll() == None:
readx = select.select([proc.stdout.fileno()], [], [])[0]
if readx:
chunk = proc.stdout.read()
print chunk
She was correct in that your problem must be different from what you posted as Caller.py and Test_Pipe.py do work as provided.
https://derrickpetzold.com/p/capturing-output-from-ffmpeg-python/
Test_Pipe.py buffers its stdout by default so proc in Caller.py doesn't see any output until the child's buffer is full (if the buffer size is 8KB then it takes around a minute to fill Test_Pipe.py's stdout buffer).
To make the output unbuffered (line-buffered for text streams) you could pass -u flag to the child Python script. It allows to read subprocess' output line by line in "real-time":
import sys
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
proc = Popen([sys.executable, "-u", "Test_Pipe.py"], stdout=PIPE, bufsize=1)
for line in iter(proc.stdout.readline, b''):
print line,
proc.communicate()
See links in Python: read streaming input from subprocess.communicate() on how to solve the block-buffering issue for non-Python child processes.
To avoid the many problems that can always arise with buffering for tasks such as "getting the subprocess's output to the main process in real time", I always recommend using pexpect for all non-Windows platform, wexpect on Windows, instead of subprocess, when such tasks are desired.
I want to subprocess.Popen() rsync.exe in Windows, and print the stdout in Python.
My code works, but it doesn't catch the progress until a file transfer is done! I want to print the progress for each file in real time.
Using Python 3.1 now since I heard it should be better at handling IO.
import subprocess, time, os, sys
cmd = "rsync.exe -vaz -P source/ dest/"
p, line = True, 'start'
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
shell=True,
bufsize=64,
stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in p.stdout:
print(">>> " + str(line.rstrip()))
p.stdout.flush()
Some rules of thumb for subprocess.
Never use shell=True. It needlessly invokes an extra shell process to call your program.
When calling processes, arguments are passed around as lists. sys.argv in python is a list, and so is argv in C. So you pass a list to Popen to call subprocesses, not a string.
Don't redirect stderr to a PIPE when you're not reading it.
Don't redirect stdin when you're not writing to it.
Example:
import subprocess, time, os, sys
cmd = ["rsync.exe", "-vaz", "-P", "source/" ,"dest/"]
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
for line in iter(p.stdout.readline, b''):
print(">>> " + line.rstrip())
That said, it is probable that rsync buffers its output when it detects that it is connected to a pipe instead of a terminal. This is the default behavior - when connected to a pipe, programs must explicitly flush stdout for realtime results, otherwise standard C library will buffer.
To test for that, try running this instead:
cmd = [sys.executable, 'test_out.py']
and create a test_out.py file with the contents:
import sys
import time
print ("Hello")
sys.stdout.flush()
time.sleep(10)
print ("World")
Executing that subprocess should give you "Hello" and wait 10 seconds before giving "World". If that happens with the python code above and not with rsync, that means rsync itself is buffering output, so you are out of luck.
A solution would be to connect direct to a pty, using something like pexpect.
I know this is an old topic, but there is a solution now. Call the rsync with option --outbuf=L. Example:
cmd=['rsync', '-arzv','--backup','--outbuf=L','source/','dest']
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in iter(p.stdout.readline, b''):
print '>>> {}'.format(line.rstrip())
Depending on the use case, you might also want to disable the buffering in the subprocess itself.
If the subprocess will be a Python process, you could do this before the call:
os.environ["PYTHONUNBUFFERED"] = "1"
Or alternatively pass this in the env argument to Popen.
Otherwise, if you are on Linux/Unix, you can use the stdbuf tool. E.g. like:
cmd = ["stdbuf", "-oL"] + cmd
See also here about stdbuf or other options.
On Linux, I had the same problem of getting rid of the buffering. I finally used "stdbuf -o0" (or, unbuffer from expect) to get rid of the PIPE buffering.
proc = Popen(['stdbuf', '-o0'] + cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
stdout = proc.stdout
I could then use select.select on stdout.
See also https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/25372/
for line in p.stdout:
...
always blocks until the next line-feed.
For "real-time" behaviour you have to do something like this:
while True:
inchar = p.stdout.read(1)
if inchar: #neither empty string nor None
print(str(inchar), end='') #or end=None to flush immediately
else:
print('') #flush for implicit line-buffering
break
The while-loop is left when the child process closes its stdout or exits.
read()/read(-1) would block until the child process closed its stdout or exited.
Your problem is:
for line in p.stdout:
print(">>> " + str(line.rstrip()))
p.stdout.flush()
the iterator itself has extra buffering.
Try doing like this:
while True:
line = p.stdout.readline()
if not line:
break
print line
You cannot get stdout to print unbuffered to a pipe (unless you can rewrite the program that prints to stdout), so here is my solution:
Redirect stdout to sterr, which is not buffered. '<cmd> 1>&2' should do it. Open the process as follows: myproc = subprocess.Popen('<cmd> 1>&2', stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
You cannot distinguish from stdout or stderr, but you get all output immediately.
Hope this helps anyone tackling this problem.
To avoid caching of output you might wanna try pexpect,
child = pexpect.spawn(launchcmd,args,timeout=None)
while True:
try:
child.expect('\n')
print(child.before)
except pexpect.EOF:
break
PS : I know this question is pretty old, still providing the solution which worked for me.
PPS: got this answer from another question
p = subprocess.Popen(command,
bufsize=0,
universal_newlines=True)
I am writing a GUI for rsync in python, and have the same probelms. This problem has troubled me for several days until i find this in pyDoc.
If universal_newlines is True, the file objects stdout and stderr are opened as text files in universal newlines mode. Lines may be terminated by any of '\n', the Unix end-of-line convention, '\r', the old Macintosh convention or '\r\n', the Windows convention. All of these external representations are seen as '\n' by the Python program.
It seems that rsync will output '\r' when translate is going on.
if you run something like this in a thread and save the ffmpeg_time property in a property of a method so you can access it, it would work very nice
I get outputs like this:
output be like if you use threading in tkinter
input = 'path/input_file.mp4'
output = 'path/input_file.mp4'
command = "ffmpeg -y -v quiet -stats -i \"" + str(input) + "\" -metadata title=\"#alaa_sanatisharif\" -preset ultrafast -vcodec copy -r 50 -vsync 1 -async 1 \"" + output + "\""
process = subprocess.Popen(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, universal_newlines=True, shell=True)
for line in self.process.stdout:
reg = re.search('\d\d:\d\d:\d\d', line)
ffmpeg_time = reg.group(0) if reg else ''
print(ffmpeg_time)
Change the stdout from the rsync process to be unbuffered.
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
shell=True,
bufsize=0, # 0=unbuffered, 1=line-buffered, else buffer-size
stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
I've noticed that there is no mention of using a temporary file as intermediate. The following gets around the buffering issues by outputting to a temporary file and allows you to parse the data coming from rsync without connecting to a pty. I tested the following on a linux box, and the output of rsync tends to differ across platforms, so the regular expressions to parse the output may vary:
import subprocess, time, tempfile, re
pipe_output, file_name = tempfile.TemporaryFile()
cmd = ["rsync", "-vaz", "-P", "/src/" ,"/dest"]
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=pipe_output,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
while p.poll() is None:
# p.poll() returns None while the program is still running
# sleep for 1 second
time.sleep(1)
last_line = open(file_name).readlines()
# it's possible that it hasn't output yet, so continue
if len(last_line) == 0: continue
last_line = last_line[-1]
# Matching to "[bytes downloaded] number% [speed] number:number:number"
match_it = re.match(".* ([0-9]*)%.* ([0-9]*:[0-9]*:[0-9]*).*", last_line)
if not match_it: continue
# in this case, the percentage is stored in match_it.group(1),
# time in match_it.group(2). We could do something with it here...
In Python 3, here's a solution, which takes a command off the command line and delivers real-time nicely decoded strings as they are received.
Receiver (receiver.py):
import subprocess
import sys
cmd = sys.argv[1:]
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in p.stdout:
print("received: {}".format(line.rstrip().decode("utf-8")))
Example simple program that could generate real-time output (dummy_out.py):
import time
import sys
for i in range(5):
print("hello {}".format(i))
sys.stdout.flush()
time.sleep(1)
Output:
$python receiver.py python dummy_out.py
received: hello 0
received: hello 1
received: hello 2
received: hello 3
received: hello 4
I'd like to use the subprocess module in the following way:
create a new process that potentially takes a long time to execute.
capture stdout (or stderr, or potentially both, either together or separately)
Process data from the subprocess as it comes in, perhaps firing events on every line received (in wxPython say) or simply printing them out for now.
I've created processes with Popen, but if I use communicate() the data comes at me all at once, once the process has terminated.
If I create a separate thread that does a blocking readline() of myprocess.stdout (using stdout = subprocess.PIPE) I don't get any lines with this method either, until the process terminates. (no matter what I set as bufsize)
Is there a way to deal with this that isn't horrendous, and works well on multiple platforms?
Update with code that appears not to work (on windows anyway)
class ThreadWorker(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self, callable, *args, **kwargs):
super(ThreadWorker, self).__init__()
self.callable = callable
self.args = args
self.kwargs = kwargs
self.setDaemon(True)
def run(self):
try:
self.callable(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
except wx.PyDeadObjectError:
pass
except Exception, e:
print e
if __name__ == "__main__":
import os
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
def worker(pipe):
while True:
line = pipe.readline()
if line == '': break
else: print line
proc = Popen("python subprocess_test.py", shell=True, stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
stdout_worker = ThreadWorker(worker, proc.stdout)
stderr_worker = ThreadWorker(worker, proc.stderr)
stdout_worker.start()
stderr_worker.start()
while True: pass
stdout will be buffered - so you won't get anything till that buffer is filled, or the subprocess exits.
You can try flushing stdout from the sub-process, or using stderr, or changing stdout on non-buffered mode.
It sounds like the issue might be the use of buffered output by the subprocess - if a relatively small amount of output is created, it could be buffered until the subprocess exits. Some background can be found here:
Here's what worked for me:
cmd = ["./tester_script.bash"]
p = subprocess.Popen( cmd, shell=False, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE )
while p.poll() is None:
out = p.stdout.readline()
do_something_with( out, err )
In your case you could try to pass a reference to the sub-process to your Worker Thread, and do the polling inside the thread. I don't know how it will behave when two threads poll (and interact with) the same subprocess, but it may work.
Also note thate the while p.poll() is None: is intended as is. Do not replace it with while not p.poll() as in python 0 (the returncode for successful termination) is also considered False.
I've been running into this problem as well. The problem occurs because you are trying to read stderr as well. If there are no errors, then trying to read from stderr would block.
On Windows, there is no easy way to poll() file descriptors (only Winsock sockets).
So a solution is not to try and read from stderr.
Using pexpect [http://www.noah.org/wiki/Pexpect] with non-blocking readlines will resolve this problem. It stems from the fact that pipes are buffered, and so your app's output is getting buffered by the pipe, therefore you can't get to that output until the buffer fills or the process dies.
This seems to be a well-known Python limitation, see
PEP 3145 and maybe others.
Read one character at a time: http://blog.thelinuxkid.com/2013/06/get-python-subprocess-output-without.html
import contextlib
import subprocess
# Unix, Windows and old Macintosh end-of-line
newlines = ['\n', '\r\n', '\r']
def unbuffered(proc, stream='stdout'):
stream = getattr(proc, stream)
with contextlib.closing(stream):
while True:
out = []
last = stream.read(1)
# Don't loop forever
if last == '' and proc.poll() is not None:
break
while last not in newlines:
# Don't loop forever
if last == '' and proc.poll() is not None:
break
out.append(last)
last = stream.read(1)
out = ''.join(out)
yield out
def example():
cmd = ['ls', '-l', '/']
proc = subprocess.Popen(
cmd,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
# Make all end-of-lines '\n'
universal_newlines=True,
)
for line in unbuffered(proc):
print line
example()
Using subprocess.Popen, I can run the .exe of one of my C# projects and redirect the output to my Python file. I am able now to print() all the information being output to the C# console (using Console.WriteLine()) to the Python console.
Python code:
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE, STDOUT
p = Popen('ConsoleDataImporter.exe', stdout = PIPE, stderr = STDOUT, shell = True)
while True:
line = p.stdout.readline()
print(line)
if not line:
break
This gets the console output of my .NET project line by line as it is created and breaks out of the enclosing while loop upon the project's termination. I'd imagine this would work for two python files as well.
I've used the pexpect module for this, it seems to work ok. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pexpect/