spawn* or exec* and fork, what should I use and how ?

[Keith Dart]

Lingyun Yang wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>   I want to use python as a "shell like" program,
> and execute an external program in it( such as mv, cp, tar, gnuplot)
> I tried:

Since you appear to be on a *nix system, a good choice is the proctools 
module in the pyNMS package.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pynms


> os.execv("/bin/bash",("/usr/bin/gnuplot",'-c "gnuplot < plot.tmp"'))

You could do this:

import proctools
proctools.spawnpipe("gnuplot plot.tmp")

You can keep your existing Python 2.3 installation, as well.

> 1. why my exec(..) command doesn't work?

It replaces your current process.

> 2. exec* must be with fork ?

in this case, yes. but proctools does that for you.

> 3. In what situation, we choose one over another ?

The fork-and-exec is a common pattern in *nix for spawning another 
process. However, there are libraries in Python that do that for you. 
See above.


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