Python: Kill (terminate) a process from command prompt using Python

Question

I am not very familiar with the computer software terminology (my apologies).

I designed a GUI in Python that suppose to execute and/or terminate a script when an appropriate button (on the GUI) is pressed.
When I press a "Start" button (QPushButton) on the GUI, the following command executes the script filename.dut in the command prompt as follows:
subprocess.call ('launcher.exe localhost filename.dut', shell=True).
I want to be able to terminate the script in a similar way, i.e., to press a "Stop" button on the GUI that will write into the command prompt an appropriate command to terminate the script. I think I can find the solution in this thread: Ending external programs with Python. The suggested solution is:
```
import subprocess        
taskname = '...'        
task = 'taskkill /im ' + taskname + ' /f'         
subprocess.check_call(task, shell=True)
```
My quastion is how can I obtain the taskname ?

Any suggestions or alternate solution would be very appreciated.

I've never used the subprocess module, but if you can get the process id, psutils looks like it might help. — verbsintransit
– verbsintransit, Commented Jul 30, 2013 at 20:04

WGH · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-30 20:03:55Z

1

If you use subprocess, you don't need to call any external utilities. subprocess.Popen class provides terminate method.

In order to use it, you'll need to replace subprocess.call(...) with subprocess.Popen(...), which returns a Popen instance. For example,

task = subprocess.Popen('launcher.exe localhost filename.dut', shell=True)
# some time later
task.terminate()

Note that, unlike call, plain Popen doesn't wait for process to complete.

answered Jul 30, 2013 at 20:03

WGH

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