[Tutor] how popen works?

[Larry Blair]

I am new to Python and have inherited some difficult code. I am expanding
the functionallity because I can read and figure out what is already there.
I just don't have enough background with Python to know how and why some
things work the way they to.

My script is shutting down an Oracle database, updating snapshots on an EMC
san, and then restarting the Oracle database.

To restart the database I call, via popen, a SQLPlus script, this script
takes about 90 seconds to execute. I thought that Python at the popoen line
would wait until the SQLPlus script was finished and then continue with the
next line of code. I want to do some error trapping AFTER the database us
running. Python however sends the SQLPlus script and then continues
executing the rest of the program.

Am I not understanding what popen does or is there a parameter I need to
send to it to pause until it is finished, or is there a better way of
"shelling" out to the OS and exeuting commands.

Here are examples of what I have tried. Both commands work the same - send
the command to the OS and comes right back and finishes running the script.

We have Win2000 as an OS

1. 

in this I create a cmd window and with the /c tell it to close after sqlplus
is finished

    syncCommand = 'cmd /c sqlplus /nolog @%s' %(local_ccf)
    pipeFile = os.popen("%s" %str(syncCommand)) 


2.  

in this I directly call sqlplus
 
    syncCommand = 'sqlplus /nolog @%s' %(local_ccf)
    pipeFile = os.popen("%s" %str(syncCommand))

Thanks for any insight to this
Larry





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