Best way to prevent zombie processes

From	Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.python
Subject	Best way to prevent zombie processes
Organization	Decebal Computing
Date	2015-05-31 23:33 +0200
Message-ID	<87vbf8l9e7.fsf@Equus.decebal.nl> (permalink)

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At the moment I have the following code:
    os.chdir(directory)
    for document in documents:
        subprocess.Popen(['evince', document])

With this I can open several documents at once. But there is no way to
know when those documents are going to be closed. This could/will lead
to zombie processes. (I run it on Linux.) What is the best solution to
circumvent this?

I was thinking about putting all Popen instances in a list. And then
every five minutes walk through the list and check with poll if the
process has terminated. If it has it can be released from the list.
Of-course I need to synchronise those events. Is that a good way to do
it?

-- 
Cecil Westerhof
Senior Software Engineer
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilwesterhof

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Best way to prevent zombie processes Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-05-31 23:33 +0200
  Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-01 01:22 +0300
    Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-06-01 11:20 +0200
      Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-06-01 20:04 +1000
        Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-01 13:21 +0300
      Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-01 13:25 +0300
    Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-06-01 14:59 +0000
      Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-01 18:39 +0300
  Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au> - 2015-06-01 11:03 +1000
    Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-06-01 11:23 +0200
  Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2015-06-01 13:37 +1000
  Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-06-01 14:16 +0200
    Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-01 16:32 +0300
      Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-06-01 16:37 +0200
    Re: Best way to prevent zombie processes Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-06-01 15:03 +0200

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