A Non-Blocking Read on a Subprocess.Pipe in Python

A non-blocking read on a subprocess.PIPE in Python

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

Python: How to read stdout of subprocess in a nonblocking way

Check select module

import subprocess
import select
import time
    
x=subprocess.Popen(['/bin/bash','-c',"while true; do sleep 5; echo yes; done"],stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    
y=select.poll()
y.register(x.stdout,select.POLLIN)

while True:
  if y.poll(1):
     print x.stdout.readline()
  else:
     print "nothing here"
     time.sleep(1)

EDIT:

Threaded Solution for non posix systems:

import subprocess
from threading import Thread 
import time
 
linebuffer=[]
x=subprocess.Popen(['/bin/bash','-c',"while true; do sleep 5; echo yes; done"],stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

def reader(f,buffer):
   while True:
     line=f.readline()
     if line:
        buffer.append(line)
     else:
        break

t=Thread(target=reader,args=(x.stdout,linebuffer))
t.daemon=True
t.start()

while True:
  if linebuffer:
     print linebuffer.pop(0)
  else:
     print "nothing here"
     time.sleep(1)

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