Spawning Cmd Window via Subprocess

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:22:07 -0200, D <dmcclouds at gmail.com> escribió:
> On Oct 16, 5:26 pm, TerryP <bigboss1... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Oct 16, 8:15 pm, D <dmcclo... at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I would like to be able to spawn a new CMD window (specifing size,
>> > color and placement of the window),  and write to it separately.
>> > Specifically, I have a backup program that displays each file backed
>> > up in the main window, and I would like to spawn and continually
>> > update a second CMD window that will display the current status (i.e.
>> > number of files backed up, amount of data backed up).  Also, I only
>> > want to display the update messages, don't want to display any command
>> > prompts.  I'm thinking I should be able to do this using subprocess,
>> > but I haven't been able to find out how.  Any help would be greatly
>> > appreciated!
>>
>> you'll likely want to fiddle with subprocess.Popen with the arguments
>> set to suitable values to invoke a cmd window and establish pipes for
>> communication; see the documentation. If that doesn't work, it would
>> probably be time to muck with the Windows API.
>
> Thanks, TerryP..I briefly played around with subprocess.Popen, but so
> far no luck (certainly not to say I haven't missed something).  You
> could be right that the Win API is needed.. I try to avoid whenever
> possible though. :)

If all you need is a status line, try using SetConsoleTile; it sets the  
window title (caption) and you don't need a second console.

 from win32api import SetConsoleTitle
SetConsoleTitle("File %d/%d - Bytes %s/%s total" %
      (i, len(files), bytes2str(fsize), bytes2str(totalsize)))

If you still require a separate console (and a separate process, and some  
form of IPC...) use the startupinfo argument to subprocess.Popen (from  
win32process; the one from subprocess only supports a few fields). You can  
find the structure definition in the Microsoft documentation:  
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms686285(VS.85).aspx

-- 
Gabriel Genellina