Start and control an extern program

[Axel Koehler]

Hallo,

I want to start an extern program and simple stop it, after a
given time, if not succesfull finished.
OS is Linux

Axel
--
__________________________________________________ _________________________
Axel K"ohler, ax**********@tu-berlin.de Tel: [phone]

[Miki Tebeka]

Hello Axel,

I want to start an extern program and simple stop it, after a
given time, if not succesfull finished.
OS is Linux

Use a Timer object and os.kill.
Usually when a program exit successfully it's return value will be 0
(the result of sys.exit for example)

HTH.
Miki

[Axel Koehler]

Helo Miki,

thank you for your help.

Miki Tebeka <mi*********@zoran.com> writes:

Hello Axel,

I want to start an extern program and simple stop it, after a
given time, if not succesfull finished. OS is Linux

Use a Timer object and os.kill.

But what is a timer objekt? Can't find it in my documentation
of the python library.

Axel

--
__________________________________________________ _________________________
Dipl. Ing. Axel K"ohler, ax**********@tu-berlin.de Tel: [phone]
TU Berlin, FAK I, Sekr. FR 3-15, Franklinstr. 28-29 10587 Berlin

[Josiah Carlson]

But what is a timer objekt? Can't find it in my documentation
of the python library.

threading.Timer
http://www.python.org/doc/current/li...r-objects.html

- Josiah

[Axel Koehler]

Josiah Carlson <jc******@nospam.uci.edu> writes:

But what is a timer objekt? Can't find it in my documentation of the
python library.

threading.Timer
http://www.python.org/doc/current/li...r-objects.html

Thank you for the hint,
but this needs threads, is this really portabel in all versions of
python under linux?

Axel

--
__________________________________________________ _________________________
Dipl. Ing. Axel K"ohler, ax**********@tu-berlin.de Tel: [phone]
TU Berlin, FAK I, Sekr. FR 3-15, Franklinstr. 28-29 10587 Berlin

[Noah]

Axel Koehler <ax**********@tu-berlin.de> wrote in message news:<kp************@rosebud.gp.tu-berlin.de>...

Hallo,
I want to start an extern program and simple stop it, after a
given time, if not succesfull finished.
OS is Linux
Axel

You could try the Pexpect library.
http://pexpect.sourceforge.net/
It allows you to start an external program and then wait for a given result
with a given timeout. Pexpect has a default timeout of 30 seconds, but
you can change that. The result that you are looking for can be
any string that you expect in the output. The string can be a
regular expression pattern. So you could write code like this:

import pexpect
child = pexpect.spawn ('my_external_program', timeout=120) # Two minute timeout.
index = p.expect (['results_you_are_looking_for', pexpect.TIMEOUT])
if index == 0:
do_something ()
elif index == 1:
child.kill (9)
child.close ()

Yours,
Noah

[Peter Hansen]

Axel Koehler wrote:

Josiah Carlson <jc******@nospam.uci.edu> writes:

threading.Timer
http://www.python.org/doc/current/li...r-objects.html

Thank you for the hint,

but this needs threads, is this really portabel in all versions of
python under linux?

It wouldn't be portable to versions of Python that don't have threads,
one would suppose.

Have you encountered such? Frequently?

-Peter

[Josiah Carlson]

> It wouldn't be portable to versions of Python that don't have threads,

one would suppose.

Have you encountered such? Frequently?

The only platform I've run into that doesn't support threads is Cygwin
(a couple years back). I don't know if modern Python + Cygwin supports
threads, so it may be worth checking.

On the other hand, every version of Python I've used on linux since mid
2001 (Python 2.0 on linux kernel 2.4.x) has supported threads.

- Josiah