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 a simple solution based on threads which:

• works on both Linux and Windows (not relying on select).
• reads both stdout and stderr asynchronouly.
• doesn't rely on active polling with arbitrary waiting time (CPU friendly).
• doesn't use asyncio (which may conflict with other libraries).
• runs until the child process terminates.

printer.py

import time
import sys

sys.stdout.write("Hello\n")
sys.stdout.flush()
time.sleep(1)
sys.stdout.write("World!\n")
sys.stdout.flush()
time.sleep(1)
sys.stderr.write("That's an error\n")
sys.stderr.flush()
time.sleep(2)
sys.stdout.write("Actually, I'm fine\n")
sys.stdout.flush()
time.sleep(1)

reader.py

import queue
import subprocess
import sys
import threading


def enqueue_stream(stream, queue, type):
    for line in iter(stream.readline, b''):
        queue.put(str(type) + line.decode('utf-8'))
    stream.close()


def enqueue_process(process, queue):
    process.wait()
    queue.put('x')


p = subprocess.Popen('python printer.py', stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
q = queue.Queue()
to = threading.Thread(target=enqueue_stream, args=(p.stdout, q, 1))
te = threading.Thread(target=enqueue_stream, args=(p.stderr, q, 2))
tp = threading.Thread(target=enqueue_process, args=(p, q))
te.start()
to.start()
tp.start()

while True:
    line = q.get()
    if line[0] == 'x':
        break
    if line[0] == '2':  # stderr
        sys.stdout.write("\033[0;31m")  # ANSI red color
    sys.stdout.write(line[1:])
    if line[0] == '2':
        sys.stdout.write("\033[0m")  # reset ANSI code
    sys.stdout.flush()

tp.join()
to.join()
te.join()