Have you ever run into a traceback that ends with something like this?
File "C:\Python27\lib\logging\handlers.py", line 141, in doRollover os.rename(self.baseFilename, dfn) WindowsError: [Error 32] The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process
I certainly have, in a few places. The basic problem is that when python creates file objects on Windows (and I think on *nix as well), by default Python will mark the handle as being inheritable (I’m sure there’s a reason why… but, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for this to be the default behavior to me). So if your script spawns a new process, that new process will inherit all the file handles from your script — and of course since it doesn’t realize that it even has those handles, it’ll never close them. A great example of this is launching a process, then exiting. When you launch your script again and try to open that handle… the other process still has it open, and depending on how the file was opened, you may not be able to open it due to a sharing violation.
It looks like they’re trying to provide ways to fix the problem in PEP 433 for Python 3.3, but that doesn’t help those of us still using Python 2.7. Here’s a snippet that you can put at the very beginning of your script to fix this problem on Windows:
import sys if sys.platform == 'win32': from ctypes import * import msvcrt __builtins__open = __builtins__.open def __open_inheritance_hack(*args, **kwargs): result = __builtins__open(*args, **kwargs) handle = msvcrt.get_osfhandle(result.fileno()) windll.kernel32.SetHandleInformation(handle, 1, 0) return result __builtins__.open = __open_inheritance_hack
Now, I admit, this is a bit of a hack… but it solves the problem for me. Hope you find this useful!