How do you get the process ID of a program in Unix or Linux using Python

Question

I m writing some monitoring scripts in Python and I m trying to find the cleanest way to get the process ID of any random running program given the name of that program  something like  ps -ef   grep MyProgram   I could parse the output of that however I thought there might be a better way in python

User · Answer

This is a simplified variation of Fernando's answer. This is for Linux and either Python 2 or 3. No external library is needed, and no external process is run.

import glob

def get_command_pid(command):
    for path in glob.glob('/proc/*/comm'):
        if open(path).read().rstrip() == command:
            return path.split('/')[2]

Only the first matching process found will be returned, which works well for some purposes. To get the PIDs of multiple matching processes, you could just replace the return with yield, and then get a list with pids = list(get_command_pid(command)).

Alternatively, as a single expression:

For one process:

next(path.split('/')[2] for path in glob.glob('/proc/*/comm') if open(path).read().rstrip() == command)

For multiple processes:

[path.split('/')[2] for path in glob.glob('/proc/*/comm') if open(path).read().rstrip() == command]

User · Answer

The task can be solved using the following piece of code   0 28  being interval where the name is being held  while  29 34  contains the actual pid   import os  program pid   0 program name    notepad exe   task manager lines   os popen  tasklist   readlines   for line in task manager lines      try          if str line 0 28      program name    28 - len program name          so it includes the whitespaces             program pid   int line 29 34               break     except          pass  print program pid

User · Answer

If you are not limiting yourself to the standard library  I like psutil for this   For instance to find all  python  processes    gt  gt  gt  import psutil  gt  gt  gt   p info for p in psutil process iter attrs   pid    name    if  python  in p info  name       name    python3    pid   21947      name    python    pid   23835

User · Answer

For posix  Linux  BSD  etc    only need  proc directory to be mounted  it s easier to work with os files in  proc  Works on python 2 and 3   The only difference is the Exception tree  therefore the  except Exception   which i dislike but kept to maintain compatibility  Also could ve created custom exception       usr bin env python  import os import sys   for dirname in os listdir   proc        if dirname     curproc           continue      try          with open   proc    cmdline  format dirname   mode  rb   as fd              content   fd read   decode   split   x00       except Exception          continue      for i in sys argv 1            if i in content 0                 dirname is also the number of PID             print   0  lt 12     1   format dirname      join content      Sample Output  it works like pgrep    phoemur   python     pgrep py bash 1487           -bash  1779            bin bash

User · Answer

Also  Python  How to get PID by process name   Adaptation to previous posted answers   def getpid process name       import os     return  item split   1  for item in os popen  tasklist   read   splitlines   4   if process name in item split     getpid  cmd exe     6560    3244    9024    4828

User · Answer

For Windows  A Way to get all the pids of programs on your computer without downloading any modules   import os  pids      a   os popen  tasklist   readlines   for x in a        try           pids append int x 29 34          except             pass for each in pids           print each    If you just wanted one program or all programs with the same name and you wanted to kill the process or something   import os  sys  win32api  tasklistrl   os popen  tasklist   readlines   tasklistr   os popen  tasklist   read    print tasklistr   def kill process        process exists forsure   False      gotpid   False      for examine in tasklistrl              if process    examine 0 len process                    process exists forsure   True      if process exists forsure           print  That process exists         else          print  That process does not exist            raw input           sys exit        for getpid in tasklistrl           if process    getpid 0 len process                    pid   int getpid 29 34                   gotpid   True                 try                    handle   win32api OpenProcess 1  False  pid                    win32api TerminateProcess handle  0                    win32api CloseHandle handle                    print  Successfully killed process  s on pid  d      getpid 0 len prompt    pid                   except win32api error as err                    print err                    raw input                     sys exit       if not gotpid         print  Could not get process pid           raw input          sys exit       raw input      sys exit    prompt   raw input  Which process would you like to kill     kill prompt    That was just a paste of my process kill program I could make it a whole lot better but it is okay

User · Answer

With psutil    can be installed with  sudo  pip install psutil   import psutil    Get current process pid current process pid   psutil Process   pid print current process pid     e g 12971    Get pids by program name program name    chrome  process pids    process pid for process in psutil process iter   if process name    program name  print process pids     e g  1059  2343            9645

User · Answer

From the standard library   os getpid

User · Answer

Try pgrep   Its output format is much simpler and therefore easier to parse

[python] How do you get the process ID of a program in Unix or Linux using Python?

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