Using subprocesses

AnyIO allows you to run arbitrary executables in subprocesses, either as a one-shot call or by opening a process handle for you that gives you more control over the subprocess.

You can either give the command as a string, in which case it is passed to your default shell (equivalent to shell=True in subprocess.run()), or as a sequence of strings (shell=False) in which the executable is the first item in the sequence and the rest are arguments passed to it.

Note

The subprocess facilities provided by AnyIO do not include a way to execute arbitrary Python code like the multiprocessing module does, but they can be used as building blocks for such a feature.

Running one-shot commands

To run an external command with one call, use run_process():

from anyio import run_process, run


async def main():
    result = await run_process('ps')
    print(result.stdout.decode())

run(main)

The snippet above runs the ps command within a shell (. To run it directly:

from anyio import run_process, run


async def main():
    result = await run_process(['ps'])
    print(result.stdout.decode())

run(main)

Working with processes

When you have more complex requirements for your interaction with subprocesses, you can launch one with open_process():

from anyio import open_process, run
from anyio.streams.text import TextReceiveStream


async def main():
    async with await open_process(['ps']) as process:
        async for text in TextReceiveStream(process.stdout):
            print(text)

run(main)

See the API documentation of Process for more information.