CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonfork
user7659542
user7659542

Reputation:

What is the difference between subprocess.Popen() and os.fork()?

It seems like subprocess.Popen() and os.fork() both are able to create a child process. I would however like to know what the difference is between both. When would you use which one? I tried looking at their source code but I couldn't find fork()'s source code on my machine and it wasn't totally clear how Popen works on Unix machines.

Could someobody please elaborate?

Thanks

Upvotes: 17

Views: 17316

Answers (3)

melpomene
melpomene

Reputation: 85757

So I read the documentation for you. Results:

  • os.fork only exists on Unix. It creates a child process (by cloning the existing process), but that's all it does. When it returns, you have two (mostly) identical processes, both running the same code, both returning from os.fork (but the new process gets 0 from os.fork while the parent process gets the PID of the child process).

  • subprocess.Popen is more portable (in particular, it works on Windows). It creates a child process, but you must specify another program that the child process should execute. On Unix, it is implemented by calling os.fork (to clone the parent process), then os.execvp (to load the program into the new child process). Because Popen is all about executing a program, it lets you customize the initial environment of the program. You can redirect its standard handles, specify command line arguments, override environment variables, set its working directory, etc. None of this applies to os.fork.

In general, subprocess.Popen is more convenient to use. If you use os.fork, there's a lot you need to handle manually, and it'll only work on Unix systems. On the other hand, if you actually want to clone a process and not execute a new program, os.fork is the way to go.

Upvotes: 11

Saurabh Jain
Saurabh Jain

Reputation: 9

Subprocess.popen() spawns a new OS level process.

os.fork() creates another process which will resume at exactly the same place as this one. So within the first loop run, you get a fork after which you have two processes, the "original one" (which gets a pid value of the PID of the child process) and the forked one (which gets a pid value of 0).

Upvotes: 0

DeepSpace
DeepSpace

Reputation: 81594

subprocess.Popen let's you execute an arbitrary program/command/executable/whatever in its own process.

os.fork only allows you to create a child process that will execute the same script from the exact line in which you called it. As its name suggests, it "simply" forks the current process into 2.

os.fork is only available on Unix, and subprocess.Popen is cross-platfrom.

Upvotes: 16

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