A non-blocking read on a subprocess.PIPE in Python

Question

I\'m using the subprocess module to start a subprocess and connect to its output stream (standard output). I want to be able to execute non-blocking reads on its standard ou

Answer 1

Here is my code, used to catch every output from subprocess ASAP, including partial lines. It pumps at same time and stdout and stderr in almost correct order.

Tested and correctly worked on Python 2.7 linux & windows.

#!/usr/bin/python
#
# Runner with stdout/stderr catcher
#
from sys import argv
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
import os, io
from threading import Thread
import Queue
def __main__():
    if (len(argv) > 1) and (argv[-1] == "-sub-"):
        import time, sys
        print "Application runned!"
        time.sleep(2)
        print "Slept 2 second"
        time.sleep(1)
        print "Slept 1 additional second",
        time.sleep(2)
        sys.stderr.write("Stderr output after 5 seconds")
        print "Eol on stdin"
        sys.stderr.write("Eol on stderr\n")
        time.sleep(1)
        print "Wow, we have end of work!",
    else:
        os.environ["PYTHONUNBUFFERED"]="1"
        try:
            p = Popen( argv + ["-sub-"],
                       bufsize=0, # line-buffered
                       stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE )
        except WindowsError, W:
            if W.winerror==193:
                p = Popen( argv + ["-sub-"],
                           shell=True, # Try to run via shell
                           bufsize=0, # line-buffered
                           stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE )
            else:
                raise
        inp = Queue.Queue()
        sout = io.open(p.stdout.fileno(), 'rb', closefd=False)
        serr = io.open(p.stderr.fileno(), 'rb', closefd=False)
        def Pump(stream, category):
            queue = Queue.Queue()
            def rdr():
                while True:
                    buf = stream.read1(8192)
                    if len(buf)>0:
                        queue.put( buf )
                    else:
                        queue.put( None )
                        return
            def clct():
                active = True
                while active:
                    r = queue.get()
                    try:
                        while True:
                            r1 = queue.get(timeout=0.005)
                            if r1 is None:
                                active = False
                                break
                            else:
                                r += r1
                    except Queue.Empty:
                        pass
                    inp.put( (category, r) )
            for tgt in [rdr, clct]:
                th = Thread(target=tgt)
                th.setDaemon(True)
                th.start()
        Pump(sout, 'stdout')
        Pump(serr, 'stderr')

        while p.poll() is None:
            # App still working
            try:
                chan,line = inp.get(timeout = 1.0)
                if chan=='stdout':
                    print "STDOUT>>", line, "