Trouble printing text live with Python subprocess.call - python

Off the bat, here is what I am importing:
import os, shutil
from subprocess import call, PIPE, STDOUT
I have a line of code that calls bjam to compile a library:
call(['./bjam',
'-j8',
'--prefix="' + tools_dir + '"'],
stdout=PIPE)
I want it to print out text as the compilation occurs. Instead, it prints everything out at the end.
It does not print anything when I run it like this. I have tried running the command outside of Python and determined that all of the output is to stdout (when I did ./bjam -j8 > /dev/null I got no output, and when I ran ./bjam -j8 2> /dev/null I got output).
What am I doing wrong here? I want to print the output from call live.
As a sidenote, I also noticed something when I was outputting the results of a git clone operation:
call(['git',
'clone', 'https://github.com/moses-smt/mosesdecoder.git'],
stdout=PIPE)
prints the stdout text live as the call process is run.
call(['git',
'clone', 'https://github.com/moses-smt/mosesdecoder.git'],
stdout=PIPE, stderr=STDOUT)
does not print out any text. What is going on here?

stdout=PIPE redirects subprocess' stdout to a pipe. Don't do it unless you want to read from the subprocesses stdout in your code using proc.communicate() method or using proc.stdout attribute directly.
If you remove it then subprocess should print to stdout like it does in the shell:
from subprocess import check_call
check_call(['./bjam', '-j8', '--prefix', tools_dir])
I've used check_call() to raise an exception if the child process fails.
See Python: read streaming input from subprocess.communicate() if you want to read subprocess' output line by line (making the line available as a variable in Python) as soon as it is avaiable.

Try:
def run(command):
proc = subprocess.Popen(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for lineno, line in enumerate(proc.stdout):
try:
print(line.decode('utf-8').replace('\n', ''))
except UnicodeDecodeError:
print('error(%d): cannot decode %s' % (lineno, line))
The try...except logic is for python 3 (maybe 3.2/3.3, I'm not sure), as there line is a byte array not a string. For earlier versions of python, you should be able to do:
def run(command):
proc = subprocess.Popen(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in proc.stdout:
print(line.replace('\n', ''))
Now, you can do:
run(['./bjam', '-j8', '--prefix="' + tools_dir + '"'])

call will not print anything it captures. As documentation says "Do not use stdout=PIPE or stderr=PIPE with this function. As the pipes are not being read in the current process, the child process may block if it generates enough output to a pipe to fill up the OS pipe buffer."
Consider using check_output and print its return value.
In the first case with git call you are not capturing stderr and therefor it normally flows onto your terminal.

Related

Read output from GNU GCC Compiler

I'm actually making a program in Python to run my C and C++ codes
When i tried to read the stdout of gcc, they return me nothing, an empty string
import subprocess
output = ''
cam = "g++ main.cpp -o output.exe -std=C++11"
proc = subprocess.Popen(cam, cwd='C:/test/', stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
proc.wait()
for line in proc.stdout:
output += line.rstrip()
And this is the real output (The error is proposital, just to check the output)
I just want to know how i read the output of GCC and copy to some variable
This is because g++ outputs errors on STDERR, not STDOUT. You should use stderr=subprocess.PIPE if you wish to read those errors, which will then be available in proc.stderr.
proc = subprocess.Popen(cam, cwd='C:/test/', stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
proc.wait()
for line in proc.stderr:
output += line.rstrip()
Also notice that you should not use .wait() in this situation. You want to use .communicate() instead, as stated by the documentation:
Note: This will deadlock when using stdout=PIPE or stderr=PIPE and the child process generates enough output to a pipe such that it blocks waiting for the OS pipe buffer to accept more data. Use Popen.communicate() when using pipes to avoid that.

Need help to read out the output of a subprocess

My python script (python 3.4.3) calls a bash script via subprocess.
OutPST = subprocess.check_output(cmd,shell=True)
It works, but the problem is, that I only get half of the data. The subprocess I call, calls a different subprocess and I have the guess, that if the "sub subprocess" sends the EOF, my programm thinks, that that´s it and ends the check_output.
Has someone an idea how to get all the data?
You should use subprocess.run() unless you really need that fine grained of control over talking to the processing via its stdin (or doing something else while the process is running instead of blocking for it to finish). It makes capturing output super easy:
from subprocess import run, PIPE
result = run(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
print(result.stdout)
print(result.stderr)
If you want to merge stdout and stderr (like how you'd see it in your terminal if you didn't do any redirection), you can use the special destination STDOUT for stderr:
from subprocess import STDOUT
result = run(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=STDOUT)
print(result.stdout)

Read stdout from subprocess until there is nothing left

I would like to run several commands in the same shell. After some research I found that I could keep a shell open using the return process from Popen. I can then write and read to stdin and stdout. I tried implementing it as such:
process = Popen(['/bin/sh'], stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE)
process.stdin.write('ls -al\n')
out = ' '
while not out == '':
out = process.stdout.readline().rstrip('\n')
print out
Not only is my solution ugly, it doesn't work. out is never empty because it hands on the readline(). How can I successfully end the while loop when there is nothing left to read?
Use iter to read data in real time:
for line in iter(process.stdout.readline,""):
print line
If you just want to write to stdin and get the output you can use communicate to make the process end:
process = Popen(['/bin/sh'], stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE)
out,err =process.communicate('ls -al\n')
Or simply get the output use check_output:
from subprocess import check_output
out = check_output(["ls", "-al"])
The command you're running in a subprocess is sh, so the output you're reading is sh's output. Since you didn't indicate to the shell it should quit, it is still alive, thus its stdout is still open.
You can perhaps write exit to its stdin to make it quit, but be aware that in any case, you get to read things you don't need from its stdout, e.g. the prompt.
Bottom line, this approach is flawed to start with...

Parsing pexpect output

I'm trying to parse in real time the output of a program block-buffered, which means that output is not available until the process ends. What I need is just to parse line by line, filter and manage data from the output, as it could run for hours.
I've tried to capture the output with subprocess.Popen(), but yes, as you may guess, Popen can't manage this kind of behavior, it keeps buffering until end of process.
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
p = Popen("my noisy stuff ", shell=True, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
for line in p.stdout.readlines():
#parsing text and getting data
So I found pexpect, which prints the output in real time, as it treats the stdout as a file, or I could even do a dirty trick printing out a file and parsing it outside the function. But ok, it is too dirty, even for me ;)
import pexpect
import sys
pexpect.run("my noisy stuff", logfile=sys.stdout)
But I guess it should a better pythonic way to do this, just manage the stdout like subprocess. Popen does. How can I do this?
EDIT:
Running J.F. proposal:
This is a deliberately wrong audit, it takes about 25 secs. to stop.
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
command = "bully mon0 -e ESSID -c 8 -b aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:00 -v 2"
p = Popen(command, shell=True, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
for line in iter(p.stdout.readline, b''):
print "inside loop"
print line
print "outside loop"
p.stdout.close()
p.wait()
#$ sudo python SCRIPT.py
### <= 25 secs later......
# inside loop
#[!] Bully v1.0-21 - WPS vulnerability assessment utility
#inside loop
#[!] Using 'ee:cc:bb:aa:bb:ee' for the source MAC address
#inside loop
#[X] Unable to get a beacon from the AP, possible causes are
#inside loop
#[.] an invalid --bssid or -essid was provided,
#inside loop
#[.] the access point isn't on channel '8',
#inside loop
#[.] you aren't close enough to the access point.
#outside loop
Using this method instead:
EDIT: Due to large delays and timeouts in the output, I had to fix the child, and added some hacks, so final code looks like this
import pexpect
child = pexpect.spawn(command)
child.maxsize = 1 #Turns off buffering
child.timeout = 50 # default is 30, insufficient for me. Crashes were due to this param.
for line in child:
print line,
child.close()
Gives back the same output, but it prints lines in real time. So... SOLVED Thanks #J.F. Sebastian
.readlines() reads all lines. No wonder you don't see any output until the subprocess ends. You could use .readline() instead to read line by line as soon as the subprocess flushes its stdout buffer:
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
p = Popen("my noisy stuff", stdout=PIPE, bufsize=1)
for line in iter(p.stdout.readline, b''):
# process line
..
p.stdout.close()
p.wait()
If you are already have pexpect then you could use it to workaround the block-buffering issue:
import pexpect
child = pexpect.spawn("my noisy stuff", timeout=None)
for line in child:
# process line
..
child.close()
See also stdbuf, pty -based solutions from the question I've linked in the comments.

Popen does not give output immediately when available

I am trying to read from both stdout and stderr from a Popen and print them out. The command I am running with Popen is the following
#!/bin/bash
i=10
while (( i > 0 )); do
sleep 1s
echo heyo-$i
i="$((i-1))"
done
echo 'to error' >&2
When I run this in the shell, I get one line of output and then a second break and then one line again, etc. However, I am unable to recreate this using python. I am starting two threads, one each to read from stdout and stderr, put the lines read into a Queue and another thread that takes items from this queue and prints them out. But with this, I see that all the output gets printed out at once, after the subprocess ends. I want the lines to be printed as and when they are echo'ed.
Here's my python code:
# The `randoms` is in the $PATH
proc = sp.Popen(['randoms'], stdout=sp.PIPE, stderr=sp.PIPE, bufsize=0)
q = Queue()
def stream_watcher(stream, name=None):
"""Take lines from the stream and put them in the q"""
for line in stream:
q.put((name, line))
if not stream.closed:
stream.close()
Thread(target=stream_watcher, args=(proc.stdout, 'out')).start()
Thread(target=stream_watcher, args=(proc.stderr, 'err')).start()
def displayer():
"""Take lines from the q and add them to the display"""
while True:
try:
name, line = q.get(True, 1)
except Empty:
if proc.poll() is not None:
break
else:
# Print line with the trailing newline character
print(name.upper(), '->', line[:-1])
q.task_done()
print('-*- FINISHED -*-')
Thread(target=displayer).start()
Any ideas? What am I missing here?
Only stderr is unbuffered, not stdout. What you want cannot be done using the shell built-ins alone. The buffering behavior is defined in the stdio(3) C library, which applies line buffering only when the output is to a terminal. When the output is to a pipe, it is pipe-buffered, not line-buffered, and so the data is not transferred to the kernel and thence to the other end of the pipe until the pipe buffer fills.
Moreover, the shell has no access to libc’s buffer-controlling functions, such as setbuf(3) and friends. The only possible solution within the shell is to launch your co-process on a pseudo-tty, and pty management is a complex topic. It is much easier to rewrite the equivalent shell script in a language that does grant access to low-level buffering features for output streams than to arrange to run something over a pty.
However, if you call /bin/echo instead of the shell built-in echo, you may find it more to your liking. This works because now the whole line is flushed when the newly launched /bin/echo process terminates each time. This is hardly an efficient use of system resources, but may be an efficient use of your own.
IIRC, setting shell=True on Popen should do it.

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