python: find out if running in shell or not (e.g. sun grid engine queue)

Question

is there a way to find out from within a python program if it was started in a terminal or e.g. in a batch engine like sun grid engine?

the idea is to decide on printing some progress bars and other ascii-interactive stuff, or not.

thanks!

p.

Welcome to the site, Pavel. If any of the responses below solve your problem, you may wish to officially accept the one that you feel provided the best answer; the answerer gets a few extra points, and it helps future visitors to the identify the best solution. — Jarret Hardie, Jun 08 '09 at 23:31
by the way, what about running `printenv` in a job and see which environment variables are set by Sun Grid Engine (such as the job number) which are not set during a typical interactive shell ? — Andre Holzner, Aug 27 '11 at 09:06
Possible duplicate of [Checking for interactive shell in a Python script](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6108330/checking-for-interactive-shell-in-a-python-script) — ideasman42, Aug 29 '17 at 06:05

Dietrich Epp · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-28T04:07:59.500

12

The standard way is isatty().

import sys
if sys.stdout.isatty():
    print("Interactive")
else:
    print("Non-interactive")

edited Jan 28 '13 at 04:07

answered Jun 08 '09 at 22:39

Dietrich Epp

205,541
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thank you very much, works just as intended! exactly what i looked for. p. – Jun 08 '09 at 23:12

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 08 '09 at 22:39

You can use os.getppid() to find out the process id for the parent-process of this one, and then use that process id to determine which program that process is running. More usefully, you could use sys.stdout.isatty() -- that doesn't answer your title question but appears to better solve the actual problem you explain (if you're running under a shell but your output is piped to some other process or redirected to a file you probably don't want to emit "interactive stuff" on it either).

thank you for your explanation, Alex! that helps me a lot! p. — , Jun 08 '09 at 23:22

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 14 '11 at 05:26

3

Slightly shorter:

import sys

sys.stdout.isatty()

answered Dec 14 '11 at 05:26

Andy Grover

608
3
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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 19 '09 at 22:14

I have found the following to work on both Linux and Windows, in both the normal Python interpreter and IPython (though I can't say about IronPython):

isInteractive = hasattr(sys, 'ps1') or hasattr(sys, 'ipcompleter')

However, note that when using ipython, if the file is specified as a command-line argument it will run before the interpreter becomes interactive. See what I mean below:

C:\>cat C:\demo.py
import sys, os

# ps1=python shell; ipcompleter=ipython shell
isInteractive = hasattr(sys, 'ps1') or hasattr(sys, 'ipcompleter')
print isInteractive and "This is interactive" or "Automated"

C:\>python c:\demo.py
Automated

C:\>python
>>> execfile('C:/demo.py')
This is interactive

C:\>ipython C:\demo.py
Automated       # NOTE! Then ipython continues to start up...

IPython 0.9.1 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object'. ?object also works, ?? prints more.

In [2]: run C:/demo.py
This is interactive    # NOTE!

HTH

python: find out if running in shell or not (e.g. sun grid engine queue)

4 Answers4