Interacting with another command line program in Python

Question

I need to write a Python script that can run another command line program and interact with it\'s stdin and stdout streams. Essentially, the Python script will read from the tar

Answer 1

see the question wxPython: how to create a bash shell window?

there I have given a full fledged interaction with bash shell reading stdout and stderr and communicating via stdin

main part is extension of this code

bp = Popen('bash', shell=False, stdout=PIPE, stdin=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
bp.stdin.write("ls\n")
bp.stdout.readline()

if we read all data it will get blocked so the link to script I have given does it in a thread. That is a complete wxpython app mimicking bash shell partially.

Answer 2

To perform such detailed interaction (when, outside of your control, the other program may be buffering its output unless it thinks it's talking to a terminal) needs something like pexpect -- which in turns requires pty, a Python standard library module that (on operating systems that allow it, such as Linux and Mac OS x) implements "pseudo-terminals".

Life is harder on Windows, but maybe this zipfile can help -- it's supposed to be a port of pexpect to Windows (sorry, I have no Windows machine to check it on). The project in question, called wexpect, lives here.