Opening TOPCAT through command line Via Python Script - python

I'm trying to incorporate the program TOPCAT (which has really amazing plotting capabilities) into a python script I have written. The problem is that when I make a call to the program it tells me:
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Here's some background to the problem:
1) The way I usually open up topcat through the command line is through the alias I have created:
alias topcat='java -jar /home/username/topcat/topcat-full.jar'
2) If I'd like to open TOPCAT with a file in mind (let's use a csv file since that's what I'd like it to work with), I would type this into the command line:
topcat -f csv /home/username/path_to_csv_file/file.csv
And that also works just fine. The problem comes about when I try to call these commands while in my python script. I've tried both subprocess.call and os.system, and they don't seem to know of the existence of the topcat alias for some reason. Even doing a simple call like:
import subprocess
subprocess.call(['topcat'])
doesn't work... However, I can get topcat to open if I run this:
import subprocess
subprocess.call(['java','-jar','/home/username/topcat/topcat-full.jar'])
The problem with this is that it simply opens the program, and doesn't allow for me to tell it which file to take in and what type it happens to be.
Could somebody tell me what I'm doing incorrectly here? I've also looked into the shell=True option and it doesn't seem to be doing any better.

Okay - so I'm really excited that figured it out. What worked before was:
import subprocess
subprocess.call(['java','-jar','/home/username/topcat/topcat-full.jar'])
It turns out it can take more command line arguments. This is what eventually got it open up with the correct comma separated file through the command line:
import subprocess
subprocess.call(['java','-jar','/home/username/topcat/topcat-full.jar','-f','csv','/full/path/to/data.csv'])
Hopefully this is enough information to help other people who come across this specific task.

If anyone else comes across this, pystilts might be of interest.
https://github.com/njcuk9999/pystilts
edit: It is a native Python wrapper of Topcat/STILTS.

Related

python script calling another script

I wrote a python script that works. The first line of my script is reading an hdf5 file
readFile = h5py.File('FileName_00','r')
After reading the file, my script does several mathematical operations, successfully working. In the output I got function F.
Now, I want to repeat the same script for different files. Basically, I only need to modify FileName_00 by FimeName_01 or ....FileName_10. I was thinking to create a script that call this script!
I never wrote a script that call another script, so any advice would be appreciable.
One option: turn your existing code into a function which takes a filename as an argument:
def myfunc(filename):
h5py.file(filename, 'r')
...
Now, after your existing code, call your function with the filenames you want to input:
myfunc('Filename_00')
myfunc('Filename_01')
myfunc('Filename_02')
...
Even more usefully, I definitely recommend looking into
if(__name__ == '__main__')
and argparse (https://docs.python.org/3/library/argparse.html) as jkr noted.
Also, if you put your algorithm in a function like this, you can import it and use it in another Python script. Very useful!
Although there are certainly many ways to achieve what you want without multiple python scripts, as other answerers have shown, here's how you could do it.
In python we have this function os.system (learn more about it here: https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.system). Simply put, you can use it like this:
os.system("INSERT COMMAND HERE")
Replacing INSERT COMMAND HERE with the command you use to run your python script. For example, with a script named script.py you could conceivably (depending on your environment) include the following line of code in a secondary python script:
os.system("python script.py")
Running the secondary python script would run script.py as well. FWIW, I don't necessarily think this is the best way to accomplish your goal -- I tend to agree with DraftyHat's solution in most circumstances. But in case you were curious, this is certainly an option in python. I've used this functionality in the past, albeit not to run other python scripts, but to execute commands in the shell. Hope this helps!

Running sequential command line arguments from python and retrieving output

I've been banging my head against the wall long enough, throwing in the towel here.
I am trying to use Python (specifically 3.8.2) to interface with a tool that has an ugly command line interface. I have the below command, which works. However, I've been reading up and it seems like this is a deprecated method, and they recommend using subprocess.run now. I've been trying convert my code over and having a lot of trouble, so hoping to find some help. Code below, along with an explanation.
os.system(rf'cmd /k "{ExecDrive}: & cd {ExecDirectory} & {command}"')
The first part of this is changing the drive letter and directory to a place where the programs executable is stored. Given a user could run this from any location, I have to ensure that they are in the right directory before running the command in the f-string below (which is essentially targetApp.exe -Arg1 Val1 -Arg2 Val2 etc.).
Second, I need to capture the output so I can parse it for some messages. I think I can figure that part out on my own if I can get the first part working, but if you're a subprocess.run pro, any help would be appreciated!
I was actually able to use the cwd command to accomplish what I needed. The new code is below.
subprocess.run(command, cwd=rf"{ExecDrive}:{ExecDirectory}", shell=True)
There is
subprocess.check_output(args)
for capturing output.
Reference: https://docs.python.org/3/library/subprocess.html#subprocess.check_output

Opening another file from Python and terminate script

I am trying to figure out the best solution to accomplish this. Basically, I want to open another program from Python (doesn't matter, could be an image, executable, etc). I have tried os.system and subprocess.call however both will not terminate the script after, and will instead wait for a return. I have looked at os.execl, and it seems to close to what I need, but I am not sure if I understand the arg's as I always get exec format errors and invalid arguments. I am not even sure if this is the proper function for what I need. Any help would be appreciated.
I have tried using subprocess.call and subprocess.Popen using something similar to this:
import subprocess
subprocess.Popen("B:\test.txt")
and it ends up with the following error:
WindowsError: [Error 5] Access is denied.
Use subprocess.Popen[docs]
Just don't call communicate on the resulting object.
os.execlp("start", r"B:\test.txt")
(That's for Windows. On a Unix system running X11, you'd do this:)
os.execlp("xdg-open", r"B:\test.txt")

how to make pyinotify to run a program on any modification over a file?

I have to watch for any input given to or any changes that made in the present content over a file, upon any modification i need to run a python program which is located in the same folder.
I tried my best to understand but i'm not able to get any good result.
It would be of great help, if anyone can help me through this.
Thank you.. :)
import pyinotify,subprocess
def onChange(ev):
cmd = ['/bin/echo', 'File', ev.pathname, 'changed']
subprocess.Popen(cmd).communicate()
wm = pyinotify.WatchManager()
wm.add_watch('file.watched', pyinotify.IN_MODIFY, onChange)
notifier = pyinotify.Notifier(wm)
notifier.loop()
Replace cmd with the command you want to execute and file.watched with the file you want to watch, obviously.
from http://schettino72.wordpress.com/tag/inotify/
I am working on adding some inotify goodness to doit. For that I want to receive one, and one only, notification every time a file is modified. Inotify makes the hard work of watching the file system and Pyinotify provides a python interface. But using it was not straight-forward as I expected. The problem is that editors manipulate files on its own ways…
It worked fine when I used “echo”. But than when I tried with Emacs I got 3 notifications. With VIM it was even worst, I got no notifications and an error message!
Getting the excelent example of phihag
wm.add_watch('file.watched', pyinotify.IN_MODIFY, onChange)
could be:
wm.add_watch('file.watched', pyinotify.IN_CLOSE_WRITE, onChange)

python saving unicode into file

i'm having some trouble figuring out how to save unicode into a file in python. I have the following code, and if i run it in a script test.py, it should create a new file called priceinfo.txt, and write what's in price_info to the file. But i do not see the file, can anyone enlighten me on what could be the problem?
Thanks a lot!
price_info = u'it costs \u20ac 5'
f = codecs.open('priceinfo.txt','wb','utf-8')
f.write(price_info)
f.close()
I can think of several reasons:
the file gets created, but in a different directory. Be certain what the working
directory of the script is.
you don't have permission to create the file, in the directory where you want to create it.
you have some error in your Python script, and it does not get executed at all.
To find out which one it is, run the script in a command window, and check for any error output that you get.
Assuming no error messages from the program (which would be the result of forgetting to import the codecs module), are you sure you're looking in the right place? That code writes priceinfo.txt in the current working directory (IOW are you sure that you're looking inside the working directory?)

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