[Tutor] running process in parallel

[Jeff Shannon]

Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>>>  i want to call and execute  other programs
>>>parallely from python.is that 
>>>possible.?what tools do i need?
>>
>>What type of programs and what do you mean by
>>"Parallely"? You can use
>>os.fork or many of its variants to start child
>>processes. 
> 
> Funny, the version of Python I'm using (2.3.2-1)
> doesn't have os.fork. 

os.fork() is a *nix-only function.  On Windows, something similar can 
be done with the os.exec* family of functions.

It's also possible, on Windows, to use os.system("start file.ext") to 
have the OS take the action that's associated with the given ext 
(usually running a program and loading the named document).  Unlike 
fork() and exec*(), "start" will cause the program to run in a new 
process, leaving the original process free to do other tasks.  (I 
believe that there's a comparable *nix command, but I'm not certain 
what it is offhand...)

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International