Mastering Python Scripting for System Administrators

The subprocess.Popen() module

The Popen class handles the process creation and management. By using this module, developers can handle less common cases. The child program execution will be done in a new process. To execute a child program on Unix/Linux, the class will use the os.execvp() function. To execute a child program in Windows, the class will use the CreateProcess() function.

Now, let's see some useful arguments of subprocess.Popen():

class subprocess.Popen(args, bufsize=0, executable=None, stdin=None, stdout=None,                                    stderr=None, preexec_fn=None, close_fds=False, shell=False,                                    cwd=None, env=None, universal_newlines=False,              startupinfo=None, creationflags=0)

Let's look at each argument:

• args: It can be a sequence of program arguments ...