Open Text File in Notepad++ using Subprocess.Popen

Question

I am trying to open a text file in notepad++ using subprocess.Popen

I have tried many variations of the following code, but none of them work:

 subprocess.Popen(['start notepad++.exe', 'C:\Python27\Django_Templates\QC\postits.html'])

 subprocess.Popen(['C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe', 'C:\Python27\Django_Templates\QC\postits.html'])

There must be a way to do this.

NOTE:

I want to use subprocess.Popen and not os.system because I want to poll to determine whether the program is still open and do something after it closes.

So, this is part of the following code block:

process = subprocess.Popen(.....)
while process.poll() is None:
    sleep(10)
DO SOMETHING AFTER FILE CLOSES

If Popen is not the best way to do this, I am open to any solution that allows me to poll my system (Windows) to determine whether notepad++ is still open, and allows me to do something after it closes.

David Heffernan · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-04 16:21:18Z

3

I expect that the problem is that your path separators are backslashes which is the Python string escape character.

Use raw strings instead:

subprocess.Popen([
    r'C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe', 
    r'C:\Python27\Django_Templates\QC\postits.html'
])

Or escape the backslashes:

subprocess.Popen([
    'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Notepad++\\notepad++.exe', 
    'C:\\Python27\\Django_Templates\\QC\\postits.html'
])

Or, even better, use os.path.join rather than hard-coded path separators.

edited Nov 4, 2013 at 16:21

answered Nov 4, 2013 at 16:15

David Heffernan

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2 Comments

Neil Aggarwal Over a year ago

Hey @david why doesn't this work: subprocess.Popen([r"C:\Python27\lib\idlelib\idle.py", r"C:\Python27\programs\test2.py"]) - where I am trying to do the same thing as above (only with Pythong IDE).

David Heffernan Over a year ago

Because the first argument is not an executable, I guess. Surely you need to pass pythonw.exe as the first arg.

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