os.system stdout redirection...

[Terry Gray]

mackstann wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 17, 2003 at 02:43:44PM -0500, Terry Gray wrote:
> 
>>mackstann wrote:
>>
>>>On Sun, Aug 17, 2003 at 01:01:41AM -0500, Terry Gray wrote:
> 
> 
>>>You can use os.popen (popen2 and 3 as well), or the popen2 module's
>>>Popen3 and 4 classes, or commands.getoutput (and there are probably even
>>>more ways :).
>>>
>>
>>All the Python docs I've been looking at must have been pre-2.0, because 
>>this is the first I've heard of the popen2/3/Popen3/4 calls.  Anyway, is 
>>there a recommended way of capturing 'make's' output, line by line, and 
>>redirecting it to a PyQt window?  The window in question is a QTextEdit 
>>control with a 'def write' function.
>>
>>Again, thanks for the help.
> 
> 
> Probably the simplest way is something like:
> 
> import os
> prog = os.popen("echo hello")
> print prog.read()
> 
> --> 'hello\n'
> 
> It's basically a file-like interface for running shell commands.  You
> can also open with "w" or "rw" and write to the command's stdin, or you
> can use popen2/3/4 to have individual descriptors for stdin / stdout /
> stderr.  The popen2 module seems to be less cross-platform, at least
> with regard to the Popen3/4 classes, as I see this in popen2.py:
> 
> if sys.platform[:3] == "win":
>     # Some things don't make sense on non-Unix platforms.
>     del Popen3, Popen4
> 
> But if you plan on only using unix, then Popen3/4 are kinda nice, if you
> like a more OOPey interface, or want more process management abilities.
> Example:
> 
> import popen2
> prog = popen2.Popen3("echo hello; read i; echo $i")
> print prog.fromchild.read()
> 
> --> 'hello\n'
> 
> There's also .tochild, to write to its stdin, and Popen4 has childerr,
> for reading stderr.  You can also do prog.poll() and prog.wait(), if you
> need to check if it's still running, or wait for it to exit, and you can
> get its pid via prog.pid.
> 
> So it kinda depends on whether you need to read from the command as
> you're doing something else, or you want to just wait for it all to come
> out at once.
> 
> import popen2
> 
> prog = popen2.Popen3("make spaghetti 2>&1")
> output = ""
> 
> while 1:
>   text = prog.read()
>   if text:
>     output += text
> 
> At least, I'm pretty sure that's how you detect that the program is done
> (reading '').  I've only used Popen3 to interface with mpg321, and it
> sends a little quit message when it's done, and then I close it, so I
> haven't had to check for when it exits.
> 
> If you need to read bits from it while you're simultaneously doing other
> things, you can use prog.fromchild.fileno() with select.select(), for
> example.  Or launch a thread, or other things I'm sure.
> 
Many thanks.  That about covers all I needed.