Check if a file is still open in python

Question

On a Windows OS, I use a python script that open an image in paint, using:

os.system("start %s" % path)

User suppose to edit the image, save the changes and close the file.

I wish the program will wait in a loop till the file is close, and then continue to run.

I tried:

time.sleep(5)
while True:
    try:
        myfile = open(path, "r+")
    except IOError:
        continue
    break
myfile.close()

It seems to break the loop also if I don't close the file. time.sleep(5) is to make sure the file got open successfully, and we don't have some timing issues.

Instead of myfile = open(path, "r+") I tried to use os.rename(), as someone advised here, but it does the opposite - stay in the loop even after I close the file.

It seems duplicate from here, but the solution there fits only for Excel files and I couldn't find an answer that fulfill my wish.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Maybe you would prefer to use the context manager version:

with open(file_path, 'r') as f:
    # do something with f
# f is closed now

This is closing the file automatically for you.

Edit: It seems the OP wants to launch Windows paint with an image that has been (somehow) detected to need some user editing. An alternative to achieve this would be: while looping through the images make a simple call to:

path_to_image = <image_file_path_here>
os.system(f'mspaint {path_to_image }')

this will open Paint with the desired image and the program will only continue execution once the Paint window is closed.