Run Python script without Windows console appearing

Question

Is there any way to run a Python script in Windows XP without a command shell momentarily appearing? I often need to automate WordPerfect (for work) with Python, and even if my script has no output, if I execute it from without WP an empty shell still pops up for a second before disappearing. Is there any way to prevent this? Some kind of output redirection perhaps?

Answer 1

pythonw.exe will run the script without a command prompt. The problem is that the Python interpreter, Python.exe, is linked against the console subsystem to produce console output (since that's 90% of cases) -- pythonw.exe is instead linked against the GUI subsystem, and Windows will not create a console output window for it unless it asks for one.

This article discusses GUI programming with Python, and also alludes to pythonw.exe. It also helpfully points out that if your Python files end with .pyw instead of .py, the standard Windows installer will set up associations correctly and run your Python in pythonw.exe.

In your case it doesn't sound like a problem, but reliance upon pythonw.exe makes your application Windows-specific -- other solutions exist to accomplish this on, say, Mac OS X.

Answer 2

If you name your files with the ".pyw" extension, then windows will execute them with the pythonw.exe interpreter. This will not open the dos console for running your script.