starting other programs from within python

[Cliff Wells]

On Thu, 2002-07-18 at 17:16, hejduk wrote:
> >  
> > If your goal is simply to execute applications from a menu, threads seem
> > like overkill to me. <shrug> I'd simply use the usual fork/exec methods.  In
> > Python, these are in the os module along with the spawn methods you refer
> > to.
> > 
> > --frank
> 
> i thought that fork/exec involved a lot more overhead in terms of cpu
> usage and memory?

It depends upon your platform.  On Linux fork() is very cheap. In fact,
in some benchmarks I saw many years ago, Linux fork() calls were cheaper
than Windows NT threads (in terms of startup times).  Additionally,
things like copy-on-write help keep memory usage reasonable.

>From the Linux man pages:
"""
Under  Linux,  fork  is  implemented  using  copy-on-write
pages,  so  the  only penalty incurred by fork is the time
and memory required to duplicate the parent's page tables,
and to create a unique task structure for the child.
"""

-- 
Cliff Wells, Software Engineer
Logiplex Corporation (www.logiplex.net)
(503) 978-6726 x308  (800) 735-0555 x308