How to read the first byte of a subprocess's stdout and then discard the rest in Python?

Question

I'd like to read the first byte of a subprocess' stdout to know that it has started running. After that I'd like to discard all further output, so that I don't have to worry about the buffer.

What is the best way to do this?

Clarification: I'd like the subprocess to continue running alongside my program, I don't want to wait for it to terminate or anything like that. Ideally there would be some simple way to do this, without resorting to threading, forking or multiprocessing.

If I ignore the output stream, or .close() it, it causes errors if it is sent more data than it can fit in its buffer.

Answer 1

If you're using Python 3.3+, you can use the DEVNULL special value for stdout and stderr to discard subprocess output.

from subprocess import Popen, DEVNULL

process = Popen(["mycmd", "myarg"], stdout=DEVNULL, stderr=DEVNULL)

Or if you're using Python 2.4+, you can simulate this with:

import os
from subprocess import Popen

DEVNULL = open(os.devnull, 'wb')
process = Popen(["mycmd", "myarg"], stdout=DEVNULL, stderr=DEVNULL)

However this doesn't give you the opportunity to read the first byte of stdout.

Answer 2

This seems to work, but it doesn't feel idiomatic.

#!/usr/bin/env python3.1
import threading
import subprocess

def discard_stream_while_running(stream, process):
    while process.poll() is None:
        stream.read(1024)

def discard_subprocess_pipes(process, out=True, err=True, in_=True):
    if out and process.stdout is not None and not process.stdout.closed:
        t = threading.Thread(target=discard_stream_while_running, args=(process.stdout, process))
        t.start()

    if err and process.stderr is not None and not process.stderr.closed:
        u = threading.Thread(target=discard_stream_while_running, args=(process.stderr, process))
        u.start()

    if in_ and process.stdin is not None and not process.stdin.closed:
        process.stdin.close()

Example/test usage

if __name__ == "__main__":
    import tempfile
    import textwrap
    import time

    with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile("w+t", prefix="example-", suffix=".py") as f:
        f.write(textwrap.dedent("""
            import sys
            import time

            sys.stderr.write("{} byte(s) read through stdin.\\n"
                             .format(len(sys.stdin.read())))

            # Push a couple of MB/s to stdout, messages to stderr.
            while True:
                sys.stdout.write("Hello Parent\\n" * 1000000)
                sys.stderr.write("Subprocess Writing Data\\n")
                time.sleep(0.5)
        """))
        f.flush()

        p = subprocess.Popen(["python3.1", f.name],
                             stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                             stdin=subprocess.PIPE)

        p.stdin.write("Hello Child\n".encode())

        discard_subprocess_pipes(p) # <-- Here

        for s in range(16, 0, -1):
            print("Main Process Running For", s, "More Seconds")
            time.sleep(1)