Develop Reference

Get %ROOT% size in Python

Is there a better way to get the root size instead of using os.walk?
import os
def get_size( start_path='.' ):
total_size = 0
for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(start_path):
for f in filenames:
fp = os.path.join(dirpath, f)
total_size += os.path.getsize(fp)
return total_size
print get_size("C:/")
I'm trying this code(which I got from here), it works fine inside folders, not that fast, but when I try it in the root directory it's super slow or sometimes it crashes [WindowsError: [Error 123] The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect]. Is there a way to get the root size just like left cliking properties in C:\?
EDIT:
I tweaked a little bit the code to avoid the errors.
fp = os.path.join(dirpath, f)
try:
stat = os.stat(fp)
except OSError:
continue
try:
seen[stat.st_ino]
except KeyError:
seen[stat.st_ino] = True
else:
continue
total_size += stat.st_size
But it still slow as hell. It takes 6~7 minutes to calculate it.

You want to access the operating system call to get the free space of a volume.
In Python 3.3 and above it's called shutil.disk_usage. For older versions of Python, on Unix people suggest various things like calling the external df utility, but that won't work on Windows. It seems the best answer is to call the win32 API function GetDiskFreeSpaceEx. Take a look at this email:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-win32/2010-July/010640.html
The code appears below:
from ctypes import c_ulong, byref, windll
freeBytesAvailable = c_ulong()
totalNumberOfBytes = c_ulong()
totalNumberOfFreeBytes = c_ulong()
# Ansi version:
windll.kernel32.GetDiskFreeSpaceExA('c:\\', byref(freeBytesAvailable),
byref(totalNumberOfBytes), byref(totalNumberOfFreeBytes))
You can also call the Unicode version GetDiskFreeSpaceExW if you have a Unicode file name.

First, get pywin32 (the Python for Windows Extensions) from here. Then, you can do this:
>>> import win32api
>>> lpFreeBytesAvailable, lpTotalNumberOfBytes, lpTotalNumberOfFreeBytes = win32api.GetDiskFreeSpaceEx('C:\\')
>>> lpTotalNumberOfBytes
300061552640
This value (in bytes) is equal to 279 GB, which is the size of the C drive on my machine. Note, however, the caveats in the documentation (reproduced in this answer with emphasis), which may or may not be relevant to your use case.

If you are looking for a cross-platform solution, you may want to try psutil.
They claim they support:
"… Linux, Windows, OSX, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris, both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, with Python versions from 2.4 to 3.4 by using a single code base."
I just tried this in a terminal window on a Mac:
>>> import psutil
>>> d = psutil.disk_usage('/')
>>> d.free
230785544192
and it gave me the correct information.
Their website and docs can be found here.

Python: Windows System File

In python, how can I identify a file that is a "window system file". From the command line I can do this with the following command:
ATTRIB "c:\file_path_name.txt"
If the return has the "S" character, then it's a windows system file. I cannot figure out the equivilant in python. A few example of similar queries look like this:
Is a file writeable?
import os
filePath = r'c:\testfile.txt'
if os.access(filePath, os.W_OK):
print 'writable'
else:
print 'not writable'
another way...
import os
import stat
filePath = r'c:\testfile.txt'
attr = os.stat(filePath)[0]
if not attr & stat.S_IWRITE:
print 'not writable'
else:
print 'writable'
But I can't find a function or enum to identify a windows system file. Hopefully there's a built in way to do this. I'd prefer not to have to use win32com or another external module.
The reason I want to do this is because I am using os.walk to copy files from one drive to another. If there was a way to walk the directory tree while ignoring system files that may work too.
Thanks for reading.
Here's the solutions I came up with based on the answer:
Using win32api:
import win32api
import win32con
filePath = r'c:\test_file_path.txt'
if not win32api.GetFileAttributes(filePath) & win32con.FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM:
print filePath, 'is not a windows system file'
else:
print filePath, 'is a windows system file'
and using ctypes:
import ctypes
import ctypes.wintypes as types
# From pywin32
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM = 0x4
kernel32dll = ctypes.windll.kernel32
class WIN32_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DATA(ctypes.Structure):
_fields_ = [("dwFileAttributes", types.DWORD),
("ftCreationTime", types.FILETIME),
("ftLastAccessTime", types.FILETIME),
("ftLastWriteTime", types.FILETIME),
("nFileSizeHigh", types.DWORD),
("nFileSizeLow", types.DWORD)]
def isWindowsSystemFile(pFilepath):
GetFileExInfoStandard = 0
GetFileAttributesEx = kernel32dll.GetFileAttributesExA
GetFileAttributesEx.restype = ctypes.c_int
# I can't figure out the correct args here
#GetFileAttributesEx.argtypes = [ctypes.c_char, ctypes.c_int, WIN32_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DATA]
wfad = WIN32_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DATA()
GetFileAttributesEx(pFilepath, GetFileExInfoStandard, ctypes.byref(wfad))
return wfad.dwFileAttributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM
filePath = r'c:\test_file_path.txt'
if not isWindowsSystemFile(filePath):
print filePath, 'is not a windows system file'
else:
print filePath, 'is a windows system file'
I wonder if pasting the constant "FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM" in my code is legit, or can I get its value using ctypes as well?

But I can't find a function or enum to identify a windows system file. Hopefully there's a built in way to do this.
There is no such thing. Python's file abstraction doesn't have any notion of "system file", so it doesn't give you any way to get it. Also, Python's stat is a very thin wrapper around the stat or _stat functions in Microsoft's C runtime library, which doesn't have any notion of "system file". The reason for this is that both Python files and Microsoft's C library are both designed to be "pretty much like POSIX".
Of course Windows also has a completely different abstraction for files. But this one isn't exposed by the open, stat, etc. functions; rather, there's a completely parallel set of functions like CreateFile, GetFileAttributes, etc. And you have to call those if you want that information.
I'd prefer not to have to use win32com or another external module.
Well, you don't need win32com, because this is just Windows API, not COM.
But win32api is the easiest way to do it. It provides a nice wrapper around GetFileAttributesEx, which is the function you want to call.
If you don't want to use an external module, you can always call Windows API functions via ctypes instead. Or use subprocess to run command-line tools (like ATTRIB—or, if you prefer, like DIR /S /A-S to let Windows do the recursive-walk-skipping-system-files bit for you…).
The ctypes docs show how to call Windows API functions, but it's a little tricky the first time.
First you need to go to the MSDN page to find out what DLL you need to load (kernel32), and whether your function has separate A and W variants (it does), and what values to pass for any constants (you have to follow a link to another page, and know how C enums works, to find out that GetFileExInfoStandard is 0), and then you need to figure out how to define any structs necessary. In this case, something like this:
from ctypes import *
kernel = windll.kernel32
GetFileExInfoStandard = 0
GetFileAttributesEx = kernel.GetFileAttributesEx
GetFileAttributesEx.restype = c_int
GetFileAttributesEx.argypes = # ...
If you really want to avoid using win32api, you can do the work to finish the ctypes wrapper yourself. Personally, I'd use win32api.
Meanwhile:
The reason I want to do this is because I am using os.walk to copy files from one drive to another. If there was a way to walk the directory tree while ignoring system files that may work too.
For that case, especially given your complaint that checking each file was too slow, you probably don't want to use os.walk either. Instead, use FindFirstFileEx, and do the recursion manually. You can distinguish files and directories without having to stat (or GetFileAttributesEx) each file (which os.walk does under the covers), you can filter out system files directly inside the find function instead of having to stat each file, etc.
Again, the options are the same: use win32api if you want it to be easy, use ctypes otherwise.
But in this case, I'd take a look at Ben Hoyt's betterwalk, because he's already done 99% of the ctypes-wrapping, and 95% of the rest of the code, that you want.

os.path.islink on windows with python

On Windows 7 with Python 2.7 how can I detect if a path is a symbolic link?
This does not work os.path.islink(), it says it returns false if false or not supported and the path I'm providing is definitely a symbolic link so I'm assuming it's not supported on windows? What can I do?

The root problem is that you're using too old a version of Python. If you want to stick to 2.x, you will not be able to take advantage of new features added after early 2010.
One of those features is handling NTFS symlinks. That functionality was added in 3.2 in late 2010. (See the 3.2, 3.1, and 2.7 source for details.)
The reason Python didn't handle NTFS symlinks before then is that there was no such thing until late 2009. (IIRC, support was included in the 6.0 kernel, but userland support requires a service pack on Vista/2008; only 7/2008R2 and newer come with it built in. Plus, you need a new-enough MSVCRT to be able to access that userland support, and Python has an explicit policy of not upgrading to new Visual Studio versions within a minor release.)
The reason the code wasn't ported back to 2.x is that there will never be a 2.8, and bug fix releases like 2.7.3 (or 2.7.4) don't get new features, only bug fixes.
This has been reported as issue 13143, and the intended fix is to change the 2.7 docs to clarify that islink always returns False on Windows.
So, if you want to read NTFS symlinks under Windows, either upgrade to Python 3.2+, or you have to use win32api, ctypes, etc. to do it yourself.
Or, as Martijn Pieters suggests, instead of doing it yourself, use a third-party library like jaraco.windows that does it and/or borrow their code.
Or, if you really want, borrow the code from the 3.2 source and build a C extension module around it. If you trace down from ntpath to os to nt (which is actually posixmodule.c), I believe the guts of it are in win32_xstat_impl and win32_xstat_impl_w.

This is what I ended up using to determine if a file or a directory is a link in Windows 7:
from subprocess import check_output, CalledProcessError
import os.path
import ctypes
def isLink(path):
if os.path.exists(path):
if os.path.isdir(path):
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_REPARSE_POINT = 0x0400
attributes = ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetFileAttributesW(unicode(path))
return (attributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_REPARSE_POINT) > 0
else:
command = ['dir', path]
try:
with open(os.devnull, 'w') as NULL_FILE:
o0 = check_output(command, stderr=NULL_FILE, shell=True)
except CalledProcessError as e:
print e.output
return False
o1 = [s.strip() for s in o0.split('\n')]
if len(o1) < 6:
return False
else:
return 'SYMLINK' in o1[5]
else:
return False
EDIT: Modified code as per suggestions of Zitrax and Annan
EDIT: Added include statements as per the suggestion of shioko

For directories:
import os, ctypes
def IsSymlink(path):
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_REPARSE_POINT = 0x0400
return os.path.isdir(path) and (ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetFileAttributesW(unicode(path)) & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_REPARSE_POINT):
Source

You can also use the pywin32 module: GetFileAttributes is available in the win32api sub-module and FILE_ATTRIBUTE_REPARSE_POINT in the win32con module. For instance, to test if a given path is a symlink to a directory, the code becomes:
import os
import win32api
import win32con
def is_directory_symlink(path):
return bool(os.path.isdir(path)
and (win32api.GetFileAttributes(path) &
win32con.FILE_ATTRIBUTE_REPARSE_POINT))
If using Python 2 and the path may contain non-ascii characters, GetFileAttributes requires a unicode string. However, simply using unicode(path) will generally fail: you should test if path is a str and, if so, use its decode method.

Just using if file[-4:len(file)] != ".lnk": works for me

Obtain Active window using Python

I would like to get the active window on the screen using python.
For example, the management interface of the router where you enter the username and password as admin
That admin interface is what I want to capture using python to automate the entry of username and password.
What imports would I require in order to do this?

On windows, you can use the python for windows extensions (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/):
from win32gui import GetWindowText, GetForegroundWindow
print GetWindowText(GetForegroundWindow())
Below code is for python 3:
from win32gui import GetWindowText, GetForegroundWindow
print(GetWindowText(GetForegroundWindow()))
(Found this on http://scott.sherrillmix.com/blog/programmer/active-window-logger/)

Thanks goes to the answer by Nuno André, who showed how to use ctypes to interact with Windows APIs. I have written an example implementation using his hints.
The ctypes library is included with Python since v2.5, which means that almost every user has it. And it's a way cleaner interface than old and dead libraries like win32gui (last updated in 2017 as of this writing). ((Update in late 2020: The dead win32gui library has come back to life with a rename to pywin32, so if you want a maintained library, it's now a valid option again. But that library is 6% slower than my code.))
Documentation is here: https://docs.python.org/3/library/ctypes.html (You must read its usage help if you wanna write your own code, otherwise you can cause segmentation fault crashes, hehe.)
Basically, ctypes includes bindings for the most common Windows DLLs. Here is how you can retrieve the title of the foreground window in pure Python, with no external libraries needed! Just the built-in ctypes! :-)
The coolest thing about ctypes is that you can Google any Windows API for anything you need, and if you want to use it, you can do it via ctypes!
Python 3 Code:
from typing import Optional
from ctypes import wintypes, windll, create_unicode_buffer
def getForegroundWindowTitle() -> Optional[str]:
hWnd = windll.user32.GetForegroundWindow()
length = windll.user32.GetWindowTextLengthW(hWnd)
buf = create_unicode_buffer(length + 1)
windll.user32.GetWindowTextW(hWnd, buf, length + 1)
# 1-liner alternative: return buf.value if buf.value else None
if buf.value:
return buf.value
else:
return None
Performance is extremely good: 0.01 MILLISECONDS on my computer (0.00001 seconds).
Will also work on Python 2 with very minor changes. If you're on Python 2, I think you only have to remove the type annotations (from typing import Optional and -> Optional[str]). :-)
Enjoy!
Win32 Technical Explanations:
The length variable is the length of the actual text in UTF-16 (Windows Wide "Unicode") CHARACTERS. (It is NOT the number of BYTES.) We have to add + 1 to add room for the null terminator at the end of C-style strings. If we don't do that, we would not have enough space in the buffer to fit the final real character of the actual text, and Windows would truncate the returned string (it does that to ensure that it fits the super important final string Null-terminator).
The create_unicode_buffer function allocates room for that many UTF-16 CHARACTERS.
Most (or all? always read Microsoft's MSDN docs!) Windows APIs related to Unicode text take the buffer length as CHARACTERS, NOT as bytes.
Also look closely at the function calls. Some end in W (such as GetWindowTextLengthW). This stands for "Wide string", which is the Windows name for Unicode strings. It's very important that you do those W calls to get proper Unicode strings (with international character support).
PS: Windows has been using Unicode for a long time. I know for a fact that Windows 10 is fully Unicode and only wants the W function calls. I don't know the exact cutoff date when older versions of Windows used other multi-byte string formats, but I think it was before Windows Vista, and who cares? Old Windows versions (even 7 and 8.1) are dead and unsupported by Microsoft.
Again... enjoy! :-)
UPDATE in Late 2020, Benchmark vs the pywin32 library:
import time
import win32ui
from typing import Optional
from ctypes import wintypes, windll, create_unicode_buffer
def getForegroundWindowTitle() -> Optional[str]:
hWnd = windll.user32.GetForegroundWindow()
length = windll.user32.GetWindowTextLengthW(hWnd)
buf = create_unicode_buffer(length + 1)
windll.user32.GetWindowTextW(hWnd, buf, length + 1)
return buf.value if buf.value else None
def getForegroundWindowTitle_Win32UI() -> Optional[str]:
# WARNING: This code sometimes throws an exception saying
# "win32ui.error: No window is is in the foreground."
# which is total nonsense. My function doesn't fail that way.
return win32ui.GetForegroundWindow().GetWindowText()
iterations = 1_000_000
start_time = time.time()
for x in range(iterations):
foo = getForegroundWindowTitle()
elapsed1 = time.time() - start_time
print("Elapsed 1:", elapsed1, "seconds")
start_time = time.time()
for x in range(iterations):
foo = getForegroundWindowTitle_Win32UI()
elapsed2 = time.time() - start_time
print("Elapsed 2:", elapsed2, "seconds")
win32ui_pct_slower = ((elapsed2 / elapsed1) - 1) * 100
print("Win32UI library is", win32ui_pct_slower, "percent slower.")
Typical result after doing multiple runs on an AMD Ryzen 3900x:
My function: 4.5769994258880615 seconds
Win32UI library: 4.8619983196258545 seconds
Win32UI library is 6.226762715455125 percent slower.
However, the difference is small, so you may want to use the library now that it has come back to life (it had previously been dead since 2017). But you're going to have to deal with that library's weird "no window is in the foreground" exception, which my code doesn't suffer from (see the code comments in the benchmark code).
Either way... enjoy!

The following script should work on Linux, Windows and Mac. It is currently only tested on Linux (Ubuntu Mate Ubuntu 15.10).
Prerequisites
For Linux:
Install wnck (sudo apt-get install python-wnck on Ubuntu, see libwnck.)
For Windows:
Make sure win32gui is available
For Mac:
Make sure AppKit is available
The script
#!/usr/bin/env python
"""Find the currently active window."""
import logging
import sys
logging.basicConfig(format='%(asctime)s %(levelname)s %(message)s',
level=logging.DEBUG,
stream=sys.stdout)
def get_active_window():
"""
Get the currently active window.
Returns
-------
string :
Name of the currently active window.
"""
import sys
active_window_name = None
if sys.platform in ['linux', 'linux2']:
# Alternatives: https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/38867/4784
try:
import wnck
except ImportError:
logging.info("wnck not installed")
wnck = None
if wnck is not None:
screen = wnck.screen_get_default()
screen.force_update()
window = screen.get_active_window()
if window is not None:
pid = window.get_pid()
with open("/proc/{pid}/cmdline".format(pid=pid)) as f:
active_window_name = f.read()
else:
try:
from gi.repository import Gtk, Wnck
gi = "Installed"
except ImportError:
logging.info("gi.repository not installed")
gi = None
if gi is not None:
Gtk.init([]) # necessary if not using a Gtk.main() loop
screen = Wnck.Screen.get_default()
screen.force_update() # recommended per Wnck documentation
active_window = screen.get_active_window()
pid = active_window.get_pid()
with open("/proc/{pid}/cmdline".format(pid=pid)) as f:
active_window_name = f.read()
elif sys.platform in ['Windows', 'win32', 'cygwin']:
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/608814/562769
import win32gui
window = win32gui.GetForegroundWindow()
active_window_name = win32gui.GetWindowText(window)
elif sys.platform in ['Mac', 'darwin', 'os2', 'os2emx']:
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/373310/562769
from AppKit import NSWorkspace
active_window_name = (NSWorkspace.sharedWorkspace()
.activeApplication()['NSApplicationName'])
else:
print("sys.platform={platform} is unknown. Please report."
.format(platform=sys.platform))
print(sys.version)
return active_window_name
print("Active window: %s" % str(get_active_window()))

For Linux users:
All the answers provided required additional modules like "wx" that had numerous errors installing ("pip" failed on build), but I was able to modify this solution quite easily -> original source. There were bugs in the original (Python TypeError on regex)
import sys
import os
import subprocess
import re
def get_active_window_title():
root = subprocess.Popen(['xprop', '-root', '_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
stdout, stderr = root.communicate()
m = re.search(b'^_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW.* ([\w]+)$', stdout)
if m != None:
window_id = m.group(1)
window = subprocess.Popen(['xprop', '-id', window_id, 'WM_NAME'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
stdout, stderr = window.communicate()
else:
return None
match = re.match(b"WM_NAME\(\w+\) = (?P<name>.+)$", stdout)
if match != None:
return match.group("name").strip(b'"')
return None
if __name__ == "__main__":
print(get_active_window_title())
The advantage is it works without additional modules. If you want it to work across multiple platforms, it's just a matter of changing the command and regex strings to get the data you want based on the platform (with the standard if/else platform detection shown above sys.platform).
On a side note: import wnck only works with python2.x when installed with "sudo apt-get install python-wnck", since I was using python3.x the only option was pypie which I have not tested. Hope this helps someone else.

There's really no need to import any external dependency for tasks like this. Python comes with a pretty neat foreign function interface - ctypes, which allows for calling C shared libraries natively. It even includes specific bindings for the most common Win32 DLLs.
E.g. to get the PID of the foregorund window:
import ctypes
from ctypes import wintypes
user32 = ctypes.windll.user32
h_wnd = user32.GetForegroundWindow()
pid = wintypes.DWORD()
user32.GetWindowThreadProcessId(h_wnd, ctypes.byref(pid))
print(pid.value)

In Linux under X11:
xdo_window_id = os.popen('xdotool getactivewindow').read()
print('xdo_window_id:', xdo_window_id)
will print the active window ID in decimal format:
xdo_window_id: 67113707
Note xdotool must be installed first:
sudo apt install xdotool
Note wmctrl uses hexadecimal format for window ID.

This only works on windows
import win32gui
import win32process
def get_active_executable_name():
try:
process_id = win32process.GetWindowThreadProcessId(
win32gui.GetForegroundWindow()
)
return ".".join(psutil.Process(process_id[-1]).name().split(".")[:-1])
except Exception as exception:
return None
I'll recommend checking out this answer for making it work on linux, mac and windows.

I'd been facing same problem with linux interface (Lubuntu 20).
What I do is using wmctrl and execute it with shell command from python.
First, Install wmctrl
sudo apt install wmctrl
Then, Add this code :
import os
os.system('wmctrl -a "Mozilla Firefox"')
ref wmctrl :
https://askubuntu.com/questions/21262/shell-command-to-bring-a-program-window-in-front-of-another

In Linux:
If you already have installed xdotool, you can just use:
from subprocess import run
def get__focused_window():
return run(['xdotool', 'getwindowfocus', 'getwindowpid', 'getwindowname'], capture_output=True).stdout.decode('utf-8').split()
While I was writing this answer I've realised that there were also:
A reference about "xdotool" on comments
& another slightly similar "xdotool" answer
So, I've decided to mention them here, too.

Just wanted to add in case it helps, I have a function for my program (It's a software for my PC's lighting I have this simple few line function:
def isRunning(process_name):
foregroundWindow = GetWindowText(GetForegroundWindow())
return process_name in foregroundWindow

Try using wxPython:
import wx
wx.GetActiveWindow()

Use Python 2.6 subprocess module in Python 2.5

I would like to use Python 2.6's version of subprocess, because it allows the Popen.terminate() function, but I'm stuck with Python 2.5. Is there some reasonably clean way to use the newer version of the module in my 2.5 code? Some sort of from __future__ import subprocess_module?

I know this question has already been answered, but for what it's worth, I've used the subprocess.py that ships with Python 2.6 in Python 2.3 and it's worked fine. If you read the comments at the top of the file it says:
# This module should remain compatible with Python 2.2, see PEP 291.

There isn't really a great way to do it. subprocess is implemented in python (as opposed to C) so you could conceivably copy the module somewhere and use it (hoping of course that it doesn't use any 2.6 goodness).
On the other hand you could simply implement what subprocess claims to do and write a function that sends SIGTERM on *nix and calls TerminateProcess on Windows. The following implementation has been tested on linux and in a Win XP vm, you'll need the python Windows extensions:
import sys
def terminate(process):
"""
Kills a process, useful on 2.5 where subprocess.Popens don't have a
terminate method.
Used here because we're stuck on 2.5 and don't have Popen.terminate
goodness.
"""
def terminate_win(process):
import win32process
return win32process.TerminateProcess(process._handle, -1)
def terminate_nix(process):
import os
import signal
return os.kill(process.pid, signal.SIGTERM)
terminate_default = terminate_nix
handlers = {
"win32": terminate_win,
"linux2": terminate_nix
}
return handlers.get(sys.platform, terminate_default)(process)
That way you only have to maintain the terminate code rather than the entire module.

While this doesn't directly answer your question, it may be worth knowing.
Imports from __future__ actually only change compiler options, so while it can turn with into a statement or make string literals produce unicodes instead of strs, it can't change the capabilities and features of modules in the Python standard library.

I followed Kamil Kisiel suggestion regarding using python 2.6 subprocess.py in python 2.5 and it worked perfectly. To make it easier, I created a distutils package that you can easy_install and/or include in buildout.
To use subprocess from python 2.6 in python 2.5 project:
easy_install taras.python26
in your code
from taras.python26 import subprocess
in buildout
[buildout]
parts = subprocess26
[subprocess26]
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs = taras.python26

Here are some ways to end processes on Windows, taken directly from
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/347462/
# Create a process that won't end on its own
import subprocess
process = subprocess.Popen(['python.exe', '-c', 'while 1: pass'])
# Kill the process using pywin32
import win32api
win32api.TerminateProcess(int(process._handle), -1)
# Kill the process using ctypes
import ctypes
ctypes.windll.kernel32.TerminateProcess(int(process._handle), -1)
# Kill the proces using pywin32 and pid
import win32api
PROCESS_TERMINATE = 1
handle = win32api.OpenProcess(PROCESS_TERMINATE, False, process.pid)
win32api.TerminateProcess(handle, -1)
win32api.CloseHandle(handle)
# Kill the proces using ctypes and pid
import ctypes
PROCESS_TERMINATE = 1
handle = ctypes.windll.kernel32.OpenProcess(PROCESS_TERMINATE, False, process.pid)
ctypes.windll.kernel32.TerminateProcess(handle, -1)
ctypes.windll.kernel32.CloseHandle(handle)

Well Python is open source, you are free to take that pthread function from 2.6 and move it into your own code or use it as a reference to implement your own.
For reasons that should be obvious there's no way to have a hybrid of Python that can import portions of newer versions.