CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonwindowspowershellcmd
user6371867
user6371867

Reputation: 201

How do I detect if my python code is running in PowerShell or the Command Prompt (cmd)

I have a python application that has a shell that needs to do some setup based on whether the shell it's running in is the Windows Command Prompt (cmd) or Powershell.

I haven't been able to figure out how to detect if the application is running in powershell or cmd.

From my searches on stackoverflow and Google, it seems the only way to do this is to use psutil to find the name of the parent process.

Is there a nicer way?

Upvotes: 19

Views: 5205

Answers (3)

Yash Gupta
Yash Gupta

Reputation: 349

@Matt A. is right. Use psutil and os package to get the parent process id and the name.

parent_pid = os.getppid()
print(psutil.Process(parent_pid).name())

Upvotes: 3

MortenB
MortenB

Reputation: 3557

The following snippet finds md5sum on args.file in bash/powershell, I usually use the first command to check what we are running in, so I can use it later on, using shell=True in subprocess is not very portable.

import os, subprocess
running_shell = None
mycheck='/usr/bin/md5sum'   # full path is needed
if not os.path.isfile(mycheck):
    try:
        file_md5sum = subprocess.check_output("powershell.exe Get-FileHash -Algorithm MD5 {} | Select -expand Hash".format(args.file).split())
    except FileNotFoundError as e:
        log.fatal("unable to generate md5sum")
        sys.exit(-1)
    file_md5sum = file_md5sum.lower()
    running_shell = 'powershell'
else:
    file_md5sum = subprocess.check_output([mycheck, args.file])
    running_shell = 'bash'

Upvotes: 1

nxl4
nxl4

Reputation: 734

Based on this post, you should be able to run this CMD/PS command through the subprocess module in your Python script:

subprocess.call("(dir 2>&1 *`|echo CMD);&<# rem #>echo PowerShell", shell=True)

This will output CMD if you're in CMD, and PowerShell if you're in PS.

Upvotes: -1

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