how to create and destroy non blocking sub process that are OS independent in python?

Question

• In a python script i want to spawn a process that runs a file in the same directory
• I dont want the python script to be blocked by the new process
• Then want to be able to close the spawned process from the script.
• Ontop of it all i need it to be OS independant.

What is the best of doing this?

Answer 1

As @Keith suggested use subprocess module, but more specifically use Popen. For example, on Windows, this opens myfile.txt with notepad and then terminates it after a 20 seconds:

import subprocess
import time

command = "notepad myfile.txt"
pipe = subprocess.Popen(command, shell=False)
time.sleep(5)
pipe.poll()
print("%s" % pipe.returncode)   #"None" when working fine
time.sleep(5)
pipe.terminate()
pipe.wait()
print("%s" % pipe.returncode)   # 1 after termination