how do I make a fork or non-blocking system call in python

Question

This is related to this question but with a different take.

In Ubuntu, I use Autokey, which uses python to automate keystrokes it observes. So I have <super>+e mapped to open Gedit, <shift>+<super>+3 to open OOwriter, etc etc. When I make one of these calls, I cannot make another one until the previous program called has exited.

Here's a sample of the script it executes:

import subprocess
subprocess.call("/opt/openoffice.org3/program/scalc")

... same behavior using:

import os
os.system("/opt/openoffice.org3/program/scalc")

This all worked smoothly in my previous Ubuntu 10.04LTS, but things have changed since then and I can't repeated make these calls.

Would you please help me with how to fork or do something to "get back" from that subprocess.call() without waiting for the program to exit? I tried nohup and backgrounding /opt/openoffice.org3/program/scalc & but those do nothing (probably breaks something in Autokey and Py)

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Answer: the answer below didn't actually work, but got me snooping around more and I found another SO answer which did work for my situation!

#Enter script code -- mapped to <super>+e
import thread
thread.start_new_thread(os.system,('gedit',))

This totally worked!! I can hit <super>+e 2 or 3 times in a row and it keeps adding tabs to gedit. :) This script makes Autokey act as though the command in quotes is typed at the command line.

Answer 1

It's as easy as using Popen instead of call:

import subprocess
subprocess.Popen("/opt/openoffice.org3/program/scalc")

call should never have worked that way since it has to return the exit code, meaning the program would actually have to exit.