Title: Terminating a subprocess on Windows
Submitter: Jimmy Retzlaff (other recipes)
Last Updated: 2004/11/24
Version no: 1.0
Category: System

Description:

The new subprocess module in Python 2.4 (also available for 2.2 and 2.3 at http://effbot.org/downloads/#subprocess) allows access to the handle of any newly created subprocess. You can use this handle to terminate subprocesses using either ctypes or the pywin32 extensions.

Source: Text Source

# Create a process that won't end on its own
import subprocess
process = subprocess.Popen(['python.exe', '-c', 'while 1: pass'])


# Kill the process using pywin32
import win32api
win32api.TerminateProcess(int(process._handle), -1)


# Kill the process using ctypes
import ctypes
ctypes.windll.kernel32.TerminateProcess(int(process._handle), -1)


# Kill the proces using pywin32 and pid
import win32api
PROCESS_TERMINATE = 1
handle = win32api.OpenProcess(PROCESS_TERMINATE, False, process.pid)
win32api.TerminateProcess(handle, -1)
win32api.CloseHandle(handle)


# Kill the proces using ctypes and pid
import ctypes
PROCESS_TERMINATE = 1
handle = ctypes.windll.kernel32.OpenProcess(PROCESS_TERMINATE, False, process.pid)
ctypes.windll.kernel32.TerminateProcess(handle, -1)
ctypes.windll.kernel32.CloseHandle(handle)

Discussion:

You can use either pywin32 or ctypes to call the Windows TerminateProcess API. Just pick one - there is no need for both. If you don't like accessing the undocumented _handle member of the object returned by Popen, then you can achieve the same result using the documented pid member and the Windows OpenProcess API.