How do I know which python script is running in taskmgr?

Question

It seems that in the task manager all I get is the process of the python/pythonwin. So How can I figure out which python script is running?

Tow

actually Windows Vista and 7 bring already a task manager that can show you the complete command line. – Vinous

Wow, didn't know that! Having found it out, it was easy to turn on. – Motherinlaw

Answer 1

The usual answer to such questions is Process Explorer. You can see the full command line for any instance of python.exe or pythonw.exe in the tooltip.

To get the same information in Python, you can use the psutil module.

import psutil

pythons = [[" ".join(p.cmdline), p.pid] for p in psutil.process_iter() 
            if p.name.lower() in ("python.exe", "pythonw.exe")]

The result, pythons, is a list of lists representing Python processes. The first item of each list is the command line that started the process, including any options. The second item is the process ID.

The psutil Process class has a lot of other stuff in it so if you want all that, you can do this instead:

pythons = [p for p in psutil.process_iter() if p.name.lower() in ("python.exe", "pythonw.exe")]

Now, on my system, iterating all processes with psutil.process_iter() takes several seconds, which seems to me ludicrous. The below is significantly faster, as it does the process filtering before Python sees it, but it relies on the wmic command line tool, which not all versions of Windows have (XP Home lacks it, notably). The result here is the same as the first psutil version (a list of lists, each containing the command line and process ID for one Python process).

import subprocess

wmic_cmd = """wmic process where "name='python.exe' or name='pythonw.exe'" get commandline,processid"""
wmic_prc = subprocess.Popen(wmic_cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
wmic_out, wmic_err = wmic_prc.communicate()
pythons = [item.rsplit(None, 1) for item in wmic_out.splitlines() if item][1:]
pythons = [[cmdline, int(pid)] for [cmdline, pid] in pythons]

If wmic is not available, you will get an empty list []. Since you know there's at least one Python process (yours!), you can trap this as an error and display an appropriate message.

To get your own process ID, so you can exclude it from consideration if you're going to e.g. start killing processes, try pywin32's win32process.GetCurrentProcessID()

Motherinlaw

Is there a better way from within a second Python process? – Pew

I looked at pywin32 and didn't see anything that would help. Best I can come up with is to shell out to wmic. I've added some code for that. – Motherinlaw

@TankorSmash: came up with an alternative using psutil in addition to the wmic command-line tool. – Motherinlaw

I see it at the top of your answer right? Thanks for the extra effort! – Pew

The psutil method gave me "AttributeError: 'function' object has no attribute 'lower'" but the wmic option worked for me. – Airglow

Use p.name() instead -- p.name is a method, p.name() is an attribute. – Lentz

Answer 2

I had some issues with kindall's answer. With python 3.8:

import psutil
for p in psutil.process_iter():
    try: 
        if p.name().lower() in ["python.exe", "pythonw.exe"]:
            print(p.pid, p.cmdline)
    except: 
        continue

Lentz

Answer 3

With Python 3:

import psutil

pythons = [[" ".join(p.cmdline()), p.pid] for p in psutil.process_iter()
        if p.name().lower() in ["python.exe", "pythonw.exe"]]

Zucchetto

The same answer was given by @Motherinlaw – Grotius