How to get interactive output from a piped command in Python?

Question

I currently have this code, whcih works and produces the output you would expect, ie a list of the output lines if you were to run 'ls -ltr | less' from the terminal.

p1 = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split('ls -ltr'), stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                                                        stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
p2 = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split('less'), stdin=p1.stdout,
                               stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
print p2.communicate()

Is there a way using subprocess.Popen or anything else to get the interactive output you can scroll through and enter keyboard commands into as you would if you ran the commands directly from the terminal?

I think that people usually suggest something like pexpect for this sort of thing (although I've never used it myself). — mgilson
– mgilson, Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 12:20

Fred Foo · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-30 12:10:38Z

2

If the Python process has its own stdout connected to a terminal, then that's

p1 = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split('ls -ltr'), stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                                              stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
p2 = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split('less'), stdin=p1.stdout)

i.e. don't redirect the output from less.

answered Jul 30, 2012 at 12:10

Fred Foo

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