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pythonwindowsconsolesubprocess

How do I hide the console when I use os.system() or subprocess.call()?

I wrote some statements like below:

os.system(cmd) #do something
subprocess.call('taskkill /F /IM exename.exe')

both will pop up a console.

How can I stop it from popping up the console?

Solution

  • The process STARTUPINFO can hide the console window:

    si = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
si.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
#si.wShowWindow = subprocess.SW_HIDE # default
subprocess.call('taskkill /F /IM exename.exe', startupinfo=si)

    Or set the creation flags to disable creating the window:

    CREATE_NO_WINDOW = 0x08000000
subprocess.call('taskkill /F /IM exename.exe', creationflags=CREATE_NO_WINDOW)

    The above is still a console process with valid handles for console I/O (verified by calling GetFileType on the handles returned by GetStdHandle). It just has no window and doesn't inherit the parent's console, if any.

    You can go a step farther by forcing the child to have no console at all:

    DETACHED_PROCESS = 0x00000008
subprocess.call('taskkill /F /IM exename.exe', creationflags=DETACHED_PROCESS)

    In this case the child's standard handles (i.e. GetStdHandle) are 0, but you can set them to an open disk file or pipe such as subprocess.DEVNULL (3.3) or subprocess.PIPE.