Question

There’s a file named startup.cmd that sets some environment variables, runs some preparation commands, then does:

start "startup" cmd /k

Which opens a command shell named startup. The manual process I’m trying to automate is to then enter the following command into this shell: get startup.xml. I thought the correct way to do this in Python would be something like this:

import subprocess

p = subprocess.Popen('startup.cmd', shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)

getcommand = 'get startup.xml'
servercommand = 'startserver'
p.stdin.write(getcommand)
p.stdin.write(startserver)
(stdoutdata, stderrdata) = p.communicate()
print stdoutdata
print stderrdata

But those commands don’t seem to be executing in the shell. What am I missing? Also, the command shell appears regardless of whether shell is set to True or False.

Answer 1

This is a new process, so one cannot communicate directly with Popen.