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

Existing solutions did not work for me (details below). What finally worked was to implement readline using read(1) (based on this answer). The latter does not block:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
from threading import Thread
def process_output(myprocess): #output-consuming thread
    nextline = None
    buf = ''
    while True:
        #--- extract line using read(1)
        out = myprocess.stdout.read(1)
        if out == '' and myprocess.poll() != None: break
        if out != '':
            buf += out
            if out == '\n':
                nextline = buf
                buf = ''
        if not nextline: continue
        line = nextline
        nextline = None

        #--- do whatever you want with line here
        print 'Line is:', line
    myprocess.stdout.close()

myprocess = Popen('myprogram.exe', stdout=PIPE) #output-producing process
p1 = Thread(target=process_output, args=(dcmpid,)) #output-consuming thread
p1.daemon = True
p1.start()

#--- do whatever here and then kill process and thread if needed
if myprocess.poll() == None: #kill process; will automatically stop thread
    myprocess.kill()
    myprocess.wait()
if p1 and p1.is_alive(): #wait for thread to finish
    p1.join()

Why existing solutions did not work:

1. Solutions that require readline (including the Queue based ones) always block. It is difficult (impossible?) to kill the thread that executes readline. It only gets killed when the process that created it finishes, but not when the output-producing process is killed.
2. Mixing low-level fcntl with high-level readline calls may not work properly as anonnn has pointed out.
3. Using select.poll() is neat, but doesn't work on Windows according to python docs.
4. Using third-party libraries seems overkill for this task and adds additional dependencies.