How to Spawn a Process in Python?

In Python, you can spawn a new process using the subprocess module, which allows you to spawn new processes, connect to their input/output/error pipes, and obtain their return codes.

To spawn a new process, you can use the subprocess.run() function. Here’s an example:

import subprocess

result = subprocess.run(['ls', '-l'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

print(result.stdout.decode('utf-8'))

In this example, we use the subprocess.run() function to spawn a new process that runs the ls -l command. The stdout argument is set to subprocess.PIPE to capture the output of the command. The result variable contains the result of the command, including the standard output, standard error, and return code.

We then print the standard output of the command by decoding the byte string returned by result.stdout using the decode() method with the 'utf-8' encoding.

You can also use other functions from the subprocess module to spawn new processes, such as subprocess.call(), subprocess.check_call(), and subprocess.Popen(). These functions offer more fine-grained control over the process and its input/output streams.

Note that spawning a new process can be resource-intensive and should be used judiciously. You should also be careful when passing user-supplied data to subprocesses to avoid security vulnerabilities like command injection.