Cross-platform subprocess with hidden window

Question

I want to open a process in the background and interact with it, but this process should be invisible in both Linux and Windows. In Windows you have to do some stuff with S

Answer 1

I'm not sure you can get much simpler than what you've done. You're talking about optimising out maybe 5 lines of code. For the money I would just get on with my project and accept this as a consquence of cross-platform development. If you do it a lot then create a specialised class or function to encapsulate the logic and import it.

Answer 2

You can turn your code into:

params = dict()

if os.name == 'nt':
    startupinfo = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
    startupinfo.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
    params['startupinfo'] = startupinfo

proc = subprocess.Popen(command, **params)

but that's not much better.

Answer 3

You can reduce one line :)

startupinfo = None
if os.name == 'nt':
    startupinfo = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
    startupinfo.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
proc = subprocess.Popen(command, startupinfo=startupinfo)

Answer 4

Just a note: for Python 2.7 I have to use subprocess._subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW instead of subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW.