datalad_next.runners.iter_subproc

datalad_next.runners.iter_subproc(args: List[str], *, input: Iterable[bytes] | None = None, chunk_size: int = 65536, cwd: Path | None = None, bufsize: int = -1)[source]

Context manager to communicate with a subprocess using iterables

Deprecated since version 1.6: Use datasalad.runners.iter_proc instead. Renamed input argument to inputs, and raises datalad's CommandError.

This offers a higher level interface to subprocesses than Python's built-in subprocess module. It allows a subprocess to be naturally placed in a chain of iterables as part of a data processing pipeline. It is also helpful when data won't fit in memory and has to be streamed.

This is a convenience wrapper around datalad_next.iterable_subprocess, which itself is a slightly modified (for use on Windows) fork of https://github.com/uktrade/iterable-subprocess, written by Michal Charemza.

This function provides a context manager. On entering the context, the subprocess is started, the thread to read from standard error is started, the thread to populate subprocess input is started. When running, the standard input thread iterates over the input, passing chunks to the process, while the standard error thread fetches the error output, and while the main thread iterates over the process's output from client code in the context.

On context exit, the main thread closes the process's standard output, waits for the standard input thread to exit, waits for the standard error thread to exit, and wait for the process to exit. If the process exited with a non-zero return code, a CommandError is raised, containing the process's return code.

If the context is exited due to an exception that was raised in the context, the main thread terminates the process via Popen.terminate(), closes the process's standard output, waits for the standard input thread to exit, waits for the standard error thread to exit, waits for the process to exit, and re-raises the exception.

Note, if an exception is raised in the context, this exception will bubble up to the main thread. That means no CommandError will be raised if the subprocess exited with a non-zero return code. To access the return code in case of an exception inside the context, use the code-attribute of the as-variable. This object will always contain the return code of the subprocess. For example, the following code will raise a StopIteration-exception in the context (by repeatedly using next()). The subprocess will exit with 2 due to the illegal option -@, and no CommandError is raised. The return code is read from the variable ls_stdout

>>> from datalad_next.runners import iter_subproc
>>> try:
...     with iter_subproc(['ls', '-@']) as ls_stdout:
...         while True:
...             next(ls_stdout)
... except Exception as e:
...     print(repr(e), ls_stdout.returncode)
StopIteration() 2
Parameters:

  • args (list) -- Sequence of program arguments to be passed to subprocess.Popen.

  • input (iterable, optional) -- If given, chunks of bytes to be written, iteratively, to the subprocess's stdin.

  • chunk_size (int, optional) -- Size of chunks to read from the subprocess's stdout/stderr in bytes.

  • cwd (Path) -- Working directory for the subprocess, passed to subprocess.Popen.

  • bufsize (int, optional) -- Buffer size to use for the subprocess's stdin, stdout, and stderr. See subprocess.Popen for details.

Return type:

contextmanager