On 02/09/12 04:29, Michael Lewis wrote:

I have a script that will run forever. Since it runs forever, I don't
want to see the interpreter or command line. I want the program to run
in the background so I don't see it at all.

That's an OS thing not a Python thing.

On Unix it means adding an entry in the startup scripts.
For an old BSD type like me that was one of the init scripts in the /etc tree but nowadays there are different mechanisms, and I'm especially unclear on how MacOS/Darwin starts up. You'll need to do some Googling.

On windows you can just put it into the Run registry entry under the appropriate key. Again search the Microsoft help system for the answers.

How can I do this? For some background, my script essentially check
every x minutes to see if any files have been updated and then moves
them to dropbox.

In that case using a long running Python script is probably the wrong answer. You would be better with a short running, do it once, script that the OS launches regularly.

Look at 'cron' on *nix and 'at' on Windows.

That will be less resource hungry, there is no point in having running programs that do nothing for most of the time.


... I can create two separate scripts to separate out the two OS's.

One of the beauties of Python is that you rarely need separate scripts.
Put the file location(s) in a config file and the same script will work for both. Only the startup mechanism will differ.


HTH
--
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/

_______________________________________________
Tutor maillist  -  Tutor@python.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor

Reply via email to