I'm trying to terminate a Python program that uses many threads on its own.
If I'm not mistaken, just sys.exit() works fine.
However, to guard against my many mistakes, including losing references to threads, I tried the following:
subprocess.Popen(['start', 'cmd.exe', '/c', f'timeout 5&taskkill /f /fi "PID eq {os.getppid()}"'], shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
I thought it was a problem with escaping the quotes, so I tried several things but failed. I gave up and did the following and it worked perfectly.
with open('exit_self.bat', 'w') as file:
file.write(f'timeout 5&taskkill /f /fi "PID eq {os.getppid()}"&del exit_self.bat')
subprocess.Popen(['start', 'cmd.exe', '/c', 'exit_self.bat'], shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
How can I do it without temp files? What did I miss? For reference, I used /k instead of /c option of cmd.exe to leave the window and check the error message in the window, it is as follows:
Waiting for 0 seconds, press a key to continue ...
ERROR: Invalid argument/option - 'eq'.
Type "TASKKILL /?" for usage.
I'm not sure if it will help, but I added echo to see the syntax of the command being executed:
subprocess.Popen(['start', 'cmd.exe', '/k', 'echo', f'timeout 5&taskkill /f /fi "PID eq {os.getppid()}"'], shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
The result is:
"timeout 5&taskkill /f /fi \"PID eq 3988\""
From subprocess.Popen:
args should be a sequence of program arguments or else a single string or path-like object.
Run notepad.exe and be sure to not type in its window so "Untitled - Notepad" is the title. I'm using WINDOWTITLE eq Untitled* so I don't have to look up the PID. Use a single string for the command. This will open a window, countdown, and kill Notepad. Note that the entire /c parameter must be quoted so it is passed to the second command window.
import subprocess
import time
p = subprocess.Popen('start cmd.exe /c "timeout 5&taskkill /f /fi "WINDOWTITLE eq Untitled*""', shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
for i in range(3):
print(str(i) * 10)
time.sleep(1)
Output in original command window showing parallel work. Another cmd window opens with the countdown. Notepad was killed 2 seconds after 2222222222 printed due to the 5 second total timeout before taskkill:
0000000000
1111111111
2222222222