Saving stdout from subprocess.Popen to file, plus writing more stuff to the file

I'm writing a python script that uses subprocess.Popen to execute two programs (from compiled C code) which each produce stdout. The script gets that output and saves it to a file. Because the output is sometimes large enough to overwhelm subprocess.PIPE, causing the script to hang, I send the stdout directly to the log file. I want to have my script write something to the beginning and end of the file, and between the two subprocess.Popen calls. However, when I look at my log file, anything I wrote to the log file from the script is all together at the top of the file, followed by all the executable stdout. How can I interleave my added text to the file?

def run(cmd, logfile):
    p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=True, universal_newlines=True, stdout=logfile)
    return p

def runTest(path, flags, name):
    log = open(name, "w")
    print >> log, "Calling executable A"
    a_ret = run(path + "executable_a_name" + flags, log)
    print >> log, "Calling executable B"
    b_ret = run(path + "executab开发者_运维技巧le_b_name" + flags, log)
    print >> log, "More stuff"
    log.close()

The log file has: Calling executable A Calling executable B More stuff [... stdout from both executables ...]

Is there a way I can flush A's stdout to the log after calling Popen, for example? One more thing that might be relevant: Executable A starts then pends on B, and after B prints stuff and finishes, A then prints more stuff and finishes.

I'm using Python 2.4 on RHE Linux.

You could call .wait() on each Popen object in order to be sure that it's finished and then call log.flush(). Maybe something like this:

def run(cmd, logfile):
    p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=True, universal_newlines=True, stdout=logfile)
    ret_code = p.wait()
    logfile.flush()
    return ret_code

If you need to interact with the Popen object in your outer function you could move the .wait() call to there instead.

You need to wait until the process is finished before you continue. I've also converted the code to use a context manager, which is cleaner.

def run(cmd, logfile):
    p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=True, universal_newlines=True, stdout=logfile)
    p.wait()
    return p

def runTest(path, flags, name):
    with open(name, "w") as log:
        print >> log, "Calling executable A"
        a_ret = run(path + "executable_a_name" + flags, log)
        print >> log, "Calling executable B"
        b_ret = run(path + "executable_b_name" + flags, log)
        print >> log, "More stuff"

I say just keep it real simple. Pseudo code basic logic:

write your start messages to logA
execute A with output to logA
write your in-between messages to logB
execute B with output to logB
write your final messages to logB
when A & B finish, write content of logB to the end of logA
delete logB

As I understand it A program waits for B to do its thing and A exits only after B exits.

If B can start without A running then you could start the processes in the reverse order:

from os.path import join as pjoin
from subprocess import Popen

def run_async(cmd, logfile):
    print >>log, "calling", cmd
    p = Popen(cmd, stdout=logfile)
    print >>log, "started", cmd
    return p

def runTest(path, flags, name):
    log = open(name, "w", 1)  # line-buffered
    print >>log, 'calling both processes'
    pb = run_async([pjoin(path, "executable_b_name")] + flags.split(), log)
    pa = run_async([pjoin(path, "executable_a_name")] + flags.split(), log)
    print >>log, 'started both processes'
    pb.wait()
    print >>log, 'process B ended'
    pa.wait()
    print >>log, 'process A ended'
    log.close()

Note: calling log.flush() in the main processes has no effect on the file buffers in the child processes.

If child processes use block-buffering for stdout then you could try to force them to flush sooner using pexpect, pty, or stdbuf (it assumes that the processes use line-buffering if run interactively or they use C stdio library for I/O).