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

This solution uses the select module to "read any available data" from an IO stream. This function blocks initially until data is available, but then reads only the data that is available and doesn't block further.

Given the fact that it uses the select module, this only works on Unix.

The code is fully PEP8-compliant.

import select


def read_available(input_stream, max_bytes=None):
    """
    Blocks until any data is available, then all available data is then read and returned.
    This function returns an empty string when end of stream is reached.

    Args:
        input_stream: The stream to read from.
        max_bytes (int|None): The maximum number of bytes to read. This function may return fewer bytes than this.

    Returns:
        str
    """
    # Prepare local variables
    input_streams = [input_stream]
    empty_list = []
    read_buffer = ""

    # Initially block for input using 'select'
    if len(select.select(input_streams, empty_list, empty_list)[0]) > 0:

        # Poll read-readiness using 'select'
        def select_func():
            return len(select.select(input_streams, empty_list, empty_list, 0)[0]) > 0

        # Create while function based on parameters
        if max_bytes is not None:
            def while_func():
                return (len(read_buffer) < max_bytes) and select_func()
        else:
            while_func = select_func

        while True:
            # Read single byte at a time
            read_data = input_stream.read(1)
            if len(read_data) == 0:
                # End of stream
                break
            # Append byte to string buffer
            read_buffer += read_data
            # Check if more data is available
            if not while_func():
                break

    # Return read buffer
    return read_buffer