Launch a shell command with in a python script, wait for the termination and return to the script

Question

I've a python script that has to launch a shell command for every file in a dir:

import os  files = os.listdir(".") for f in files:     os.execlp("myscript", "myscript", f) 

This works fine for the first file, but after the "myscript" command has ended, the execution stops and does not come back to the python script.

How can I do? Do I have to fork() before calling os.execlp()?

Answer 1

subprocess: The subprocess module allows you to spawn new processes, connect to their input/output/error pipes, and obtain their return codes.

http://docs.python.org/library/subprocess.html

Usage:

import subprocess process = subprocess.Popen(command, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE) process.wait() print process.returncode 

Answer 2

You can use subprocess.Popen. There's a few ways to do it:

import subprocess cmd = ['/run/myscript', '--arg', 'value'] p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE) for line in p.stdout:     print line p.wait() print p.returncode 

Or, if you don't care what the external program actually does:

cmd = ['/run/myscript', '--arg', 'value'] subprocess.Popen(cmd).wait()