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, axel.koehler@tu-berlin.de Tel: 030-314 73141

[Miki Tebeka]

Re: Start and control an extern program

Hello Axel,
[color=blue]
> I want to start an extern program and simple stop it, after a
> given time, if not succesfull finished.
> OS is Linux[/color]
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]

Re: Start and control an extern program

Helo Miki,

thank you for your help.

Miki Tebeka <miki.tebeka@zo ran.com> writes:
[color=blue]
> Hello Axel,
>[color=green]
>> I want to start an extern program and simple stop it, after a
>> given time, if not succesfull finished. OS is Linux[/color]
> Use a Timer object and os.kill.[/color]

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

Axel

--
_______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________
Dipl. Ing. Axel K"ohler, axel.koehler@tu-berlin.de Tel: 030-314 73141
TU Berlin, FAK I, Sekr. FR 3-15, Franklinstr. 28-29 10587 Berlin

[Josiah Carlson]

Re: Start and control an extern program

[color=blue]
> But what is a timer objekt? Can't find it in my documentation
> of the python library.[/color]

threading.Timer

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/timer-objects.html

- Josiah

[Axel Koehler]

Re: Start and control an extern program



Josiah Carlson <jcarlson@nospa m.uci.edu> writes:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> But what is a timer objekt? Can't find it in my documentation of the
>> python library.[/color]
>
> threading.Timer
> http://www.python.org/doc/current/li...r-objects.html
>[/color]
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, axel.koehler@tu-berlin.de Tel: 030-314 73141
TU Berlin, FAK I, Sekr. FR 3-15, Franklinstr. 28-29 10587 Berlin

[Noah]

Re: Start and control an extern program

Axel Koehler <axel.koehler@t u-berlin.de> wrote in message news:<kpd67jfdk 4.fsf@rosebud.g p.tu-berlin.de>...[color=blue]
> Hallo,
> I want to start an extern program and simple stop it, after a
> given time, if not succesfull finished.
> OS is Linux
> Axel[/color]

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_p rogram', timeout=120) # Two minute timeout.
index = p.expect (['results_you_ar e_looking_for', pexpect.TIMEOUT])
if index == 0:
do_something ()
elif index == 1:
child.kill (9)
child.close ()

Yours,
Noah

[Peter Hansen]

Re: Start and control an extern program

Axel Koehler wrote:
[color=blue]
> Josiah Carlson <jcarlson@nospa m.uci.edu> writes:[color=green]
>>threading.Tim er
>>http://www.python.org/doc/current/li...r-objects.html[/color]
>
> Thank you for the hint,
>
> but this needs threads, is this really portabel in all versions of
> python under linux?[/color]

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]

Re: Start and control an extern program

> It wouldn't be portable to versions of Python that don't have threads,[color=blue]
> one would suppose.
>
> Have you encountered such? Frequently?[/color]

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