I’m using the subprocess module to start a subprocess and connect to it’s output stream (stdout). I want to be able to execute non-blocking reads on its stdout. Is there a way to make .readline non-blocking or to check if there is data on the stream before I invoke .readline? I’d like this to be portable or at least work under Windows and Linux.

here is how I do it for now (It’s blocking on the .readline if no data is avaible):

p = subprocess.Popen('myprogram.exe', stdout = subprocess.PIPE)
output_str = p.stdout.readline()

fcntl, select, asyncproc won’t help in this case.

A reliable way to read a stream without blocking regardless of operating system is to use Queue.get_nowait():

import sys
from subprocess import PIPE, Popen
from threading  import Thread

try:
    from queue import Queue, Empty
except ImportError:
    from Queue import Queue, Empty  # python 2.x

ON_POSIX = 'posix' in sys.builtin_module_names

def enqueue_output(out, queue):
    for line in iter(out.readline, b''):
        queue.put(line)
    out.close()

p = Popen(['myprogram.exe'], stdout=PIPE, bufsize=1, close_fds=ON_POSIX)
q = Queue()
t = Thread(target=enqueue_output, args=(p.stdout, q))
t.daemon = True # thread dies with the program
t.start()

# ... do other things here

# read line without blocking
try:  line = q.get_nowait() # or q.get(timeout=.1)
except Empty:
    print('no output yet')
else: # got line
    # ... do something with line

I have often had a similar problem; Python programs I write frequently need to have the ability to execute some primary functionality while simultaneously accepting user input from the command line (stdin). Simply putting the user input handling functionality in another thread doesn’t solve the problem because readline() blocks and has no timeout. If the primary functionality is complete and there is no longer any need to wait for further user input I typically want my program to exit, but it can’t because readline() is still blocking in the other thread waiting for a line. A solution I have found to this problem is to make stdin a non-blocking file using the fcntl module:

import fcntl
import os
import sys

# make stdin a non-blocking file
fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
fl = fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_GETFL)
fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_SETFL, fl | os.O_NONBLOCK)

# user input handling thread
while mainThreadIsRunning:
      try: input = sys.stdin.readline()
      except: continue
      handleInput(input)

In my opinion this is a bit cleaner than using the select or signal modules to solve this problem but then again it only works on UNIX…

Python 3.4 introduces new provisional API for asynchronous IO — asyncio module.

The approach is similar to twisted-based answer by @Bryan Ward — define a protocol and its methods are called as soon as data is ready:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import asyncio
import os

class SubprocessProtocol(asyncio.SubprocessProtocol):
    def pipe_data_received(self, fd, data):
        if fd == 1: # got stdout data (bytes)
            print(data)

    def connection_lost(self, exc):
        loop.stop() # end loop.run_forever()

if os.name == 'nt':
    loop = asyncio.ProactorEventLoop() # for subprocess' pipes on Windows
    asyncio.set_event_loop(loop)
else:
    loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
try:
    loop.run_until_complete(loop.subprocess_exec(SubprocessProtocol, 
        "myprogram.exe", "arg1", "arg2"))
    loop.run_forever()
finally:
    loop.close()

See “Subprocess” in the docs.

There is a high-level interface asyncio.create_subprocess_exec() that returns Process objects that allows to read a line asynchroniosly using StreamReader.readline() coroutine (with async/await Python 3.5+ syntax):

#!/usr/bin/env python3.5
import asyncio
import locale
import sys
from asyncio.subprocess import PIPE
from contextlib import closing

async def readline_and_kill(*args):
    # start child process
    process = await asyncio.create_subprocess_exec(*args, stdout=PIPE)

    # read line (sequence of bytes ending with b'\n') asynchronously
    async for line in process.stdout:
        print("got line:", line.decode(locale.getpreferredencoding(False)))
        break
    process.kill()
    return await process.wait() # wait for the child process to exit


if sys.platform == "win32":
    loop = asyncio.ProactorEventLoop()
    asyncio.set_event_loop(loop)
else:
    loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()

with closing(loop):
    sys.exit(loop.run_until_complete(readline_and_kill(
        "myprogram.exe", "arg1", "arg2")))

readline_and_kill() performs the following tasks:

• start subprocess, redirect its stdout to a pipe
• read a line from subprocess’ stdout asynchronously
• kill subprocess
• wait for it to exit

Each step could be limited by timeout seconds if necessary.

Try the asyncproc module. For example:

import os
from asyncproc import Process
myProc = Process("myprogram.app")

while True:
    # check to see if process has ended
    poll = myProc.wait(os.WNOHANG)
    if poll != None:
        break
    # print any new output
    out = myProc.read()
    if out != "":
        print out

The module takes care of all the threading as suggested by S.Lott.

You can do this really easily in Twisted. Depending upon your existing code base, this might not be that easy to use, but if you are building a twisted application, then things like this become almost trivial. You create a ProcessProtocol class, and override the outReceived() method. Twisted (depending upon the reactor used) is usually just a big select() loop with callbacks installed to handle data from different file descriptors (often network sockets). So the outReceived() method is simply installing a callback for handling data coming from STDOUT. A simple example demonstrating this behavior is as follows:

from twisted.internet import protocol, reactor

class MyProcessProtocol(protocol.ProcessProtocol):

    def outReceived(self, data):
        print data

proc = MyProcessProtocol()
reactor.spawnProcess(proc, './myprogram', ['./myprogram', 'arg1', 'arg2', 'arg3'])
reactor.run()

The Twisted documentation has some good information on this.

If you build your entire application around Twisted, it makes asynchronous communication with other processes, local or remote, really elegant like this. On the other hand, if your program isn’t built on top of Twisted, this isn’t really going to be that helpful. Hopefully this can be helpful to other readers, even if it isn’t applicable for your particular application.

Use select & read(1).

import subprocess     #no new requirements
def readAllSoFar(proc, retVal=''): 
  while (select.select([proc.stdout],[],[],0)[0]!=[]):   
    retVal+=proc.stdout.read(1)
  return retVal
p = subprocess.Popen(['/bin/ls'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
while not p.poll():
  print (readAllSoFar(p))

For readline()-like:

lines = ['']
while not p.poll():
  lines = readAllSoFar(p, lines[-1]).split('\n')
  for a in range(len(lines)-1):
    print a
lines = readAllSoFar(p, lines[-1]).split('\n')
for a in range(len(lines)-1):
  print a

One solution is to make another process to perform your read of the process, or make a thread of the process with a timeout.

Here’s the threaded version of a timeout function:

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/473878/

However, do you need to read the stdout as it’s coming in? Another solution may be to dump the output to a file and wait for the process to finish using p.wait().

f = open('myprogram_output.txt','w')
p = subprocess.Popen('myprogram.exe', stdout=f)
p.wait()
f.close()


str = open('myprogram_output.txt','r').read()

Disclaimer: this works only for tornado

You can do this by setting the fd to be nonblocking and then use ioloop to register callbacks. I have packaged this in an egg called tornado_subprocess and you can install it via PyPI:

easy_install tornado_subprocess

now you can do something like this:

import tornado_subprocess
import tornado.ioloop

    def print_res( status, stdout, stderr ) :
    print status, stdout, stderr
    if status == 0:
        print "OK:"
        print stdout
    else:
        print "ERROR:"
        print stderr

t = tornado_subprocess.Subprocess( print_res, timeout=30, args=[ "cat", "/etc/passwd" ] )
t.start()
tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.instance().start()

you can also use it with a RequestHandler

class MyHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def on_done(self, status, stdout, stderr):
        self.write( stdout )
        self.finish()

    @tornado.web.asynchronous
    def get(self):
        t = tornado_subprocess.Subprocess( self.on_done, timeout=30, args=[ "cat", "/etc/passwd" ] )
        t.start()

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.

Here is my code, used to catch every output from subprocess ASAP, including partial lines. It pumps at same time and stdout and stderr in almost correct order.

Tested and correctly worked on Python 2.7 linux & windows.

#!/usr/bin/python
#
# Runner with stdout/stderr catcher
#
from sys import argv
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
import os, io
from threading import Thread
import Queue
def __main__():
    if (len(argv) > 1) and (argv[-1] == "-sub-"):
        import time, sys
        print "Application runned!"
        time.sleep(2)
        print "Slept 2 second"
        time.sleep(1)
        print "Slept 1 additional second",
        time.sleep(2)
        sys.stderr.write("Stderr output after 5 seconds")
        print "Eol on stdin"
        sys.stderr.write("Eol on stderr\n")
        time.sleep(1)
        print "Wow, we have end of work!",
    else:
        os.environ["PYTHONUNBUFFERED"]="1"
        try:
            p = Popen( argv + ["-sub-"],
                       bufsize=0, # line-buffered
                       stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE )
        except WindowsError, W:
            if W.winerror==193:
                p = Popen( argv + ["-sub-"],
                           shell=True, # Try to run via shell
                           bufsize=0, # line-buffered
                           stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE )
            else:
                raise
        inp = Queue.Queue()
        sout = io.open(p.stdout.fileno(), 'rb', closefd=False)
        serr = io.open(p.stderr.fileno(), 'rb', closefd=False)
        def Pump(stream, category):
            queue = Queue.Queue()
            def rdr():
                while True:
                    buf = stream.read1(8192)
                    if len(buf)>0:
                        queue.put( buf )
                    else:
                        queue.put( None )
                        return
            def clct():
                active = True
                while active:
                    r = queue.get()
                    try:
                        while True:
                            r1 = queue.get(timeout=0.005)
                            if r1 is None:
                                active = False
                                break
                            else:
                                r += r1
                    except Queue.Empty:
                        pass
                    inp.put( (category, r) )
            for tgt in [rdr, clct]:
                th = Thread(target=tgt)
                th.setDaemon(True)
                th.start()
        Pump(sout, 'stdout')
        Pump(serr, 'stderr')

        while p.poll() is None:
            # App still working
            try:
                chan,line = inp.get(timeout = 1.0)
                if chan=='stdout':
                    print "STDOUT>>", line, "<?<"
                elif chan=='stderr':
                    print " ERROR==", line, "=?="
            except Queue.Empty:
                pass
        print "Finish"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    __main__()

I add this problem to read some subprocess.Popen stdout. Here is my non blocking read solution:

import fcntl

def non_block_read(output):
    fd = output.fileno()
    fl = fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_GETFL)
    fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_SETFL, fl | os.O_NONBLOCK)
    try:
        return output.read()
    except:
        return ""

# Use example
from subprocess import *
sb = Popen("echo test && sleep 1000", shell=True, stdout=PIPE)
sb.kill()

# sb.stdout.read() # <-- This will block
non_block_read(sb.stdout)
'test\n'

This version of non-blocking read doesn’t require special modules and will work out-of-the-box on majority of Linux distros.

import os
import sys
import time
import fcntl
import subprocess

def async_read(fd):
    # set non-blocking flag while preserving old flags
    fl = fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_GETFL)
    fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_SETFL, fl | os.O_NONBLOCK)
    # read char until EOF hit
    while True:
        try:
            ch = os.read(fd.fileno(), 1)
            # EOF
            if not ch: break                                                                                                                                                              
            sys.stdout.write(ch)
        except OSError:
            # waiting for data be available on fd
            pass

def shell(args, async=True):
    # merge stderr and stdout
    proc = subprocess.Popen(args, shell=False, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
    if async: async_read(proc.stdout)
    sout, serr = proc.communicate()
    return (sout, serr)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    cmd = 'ping 8.8.8.8'
    sout, serr = shell(cmd.split())

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()