spawnlp, spawnvp and stdout-redirection

[Marc Saric]

Hi all,

I recently tried to write a small script which runs a bunch of external 
programs in paralell (3 at a time) on a UNIX-machine. The external 
programs should redirect their output to a logfile.

Here's the relevant code:

import os
list1 = [1,2,3,4]
list2 = [1,2,3]
for i in list1:
     x =[]
     for j in list2:
         x.append(os.spawnlp(os.P_NOWAIT, 'myprogram', 'myprogram', 
'-option1', 'infile1', 'infile2', 'infile3'))
     for p in x:
         os.waitpid(p,0)

Essentially this does what it should: Start three external programs, 
wait until they are finished, start the next three, etc.

Here comes the problem:

I wanted something similar to (csh)

myprogram > logfile -option1 infile1 infile2 infile3

which works pretty well on the console.

If I try to do this with os.spawnlp(os.P_NOWAIT, 'myprogram', 
'myprogram', '> logfile', '-option1', 'infile1', 'infile2', 'infile3')

or similar ('>', 'logfile' or 'myprogram > logfile') it fails.

I have no clue how to redirect output while directly calling the 
program. It works again with a little hack (a csh-script which takes 
everything as an argument, and is called by the python-script), but it 
is a bit ugly.

I have searched this newsgroup and the doc, but haven't found a sollution.

If someone knows a way to solve this problem...

Thanks in advance!


-- 
Bye,  Marc Saric

Max-Planck-Institut fuer molekulare Physiologie
Otto-Hahn-Str.11  44227 Dortmund  phone:0231/133-2168