pty — Pseudo-terminal utilities
Platforms: IRIX, Linux
The pty module defines operations for handling the pseudo-terminal
concept: starting another process and being able to write to and read from its
controlling terminal programmatically.
Because pseudo-terminal handling is highly platform dependant, there is code to
do it only for SGI and Linux. (The Linux code is supposed to work on other
platforms, but hasn’t been tested yet.)
The pty module defines the following functions:
-
pty.fork()
- Fork. Connect the child’s controlling terminal to a pseudo-terminal. Return
value is (pid, fd). Note that the child gets pid 0, and the fd is
invalid. The parent’s return value is the pid of the child, and fd is a
file descriptor connected to the child’s controlling terminal (and also to the
child’s standard input and output).
-
pty.openpty()
- Open a new pseudo-terminal pair, using os.openpty() if possible, or
emulation code for SGI and generic Unix systems. Return a pair of file
descriptors (master, slave), for the master and the slave end, respectively.
-
pty.spawn(argv[, master_read[, stdin_read]])
Spawn a process, and connect its controlling terminal with the current
process’s standard io. This is often used to baffle programs which insist on
reading from the controlling terminal.
The functions master_read and stdin_read should be functions which read from
a file descriptor. The defaults try to read 1024 bytes each time they are
called.