How to detect if a process is running using Python on Win and MAC

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psutil is a cross-platform library that retrieves information about running processes and system utilization.

import psutil

pythons_psutil = []
for p in psutil.process_iter():
    try:
        if p.name() == 'python.exe':
            pythons_psutil.append(p)
    except psutil.Error:
        pass

>>> pythons_psutil
[<psutil.Process(pid=16988, name="python.exe") at 25793424>]

>>> print(*sorted(pythons_psutil[0].as_dict()), sep='\n')
cmdline
connections
cpu_affinity
cpu_percent
cpu_times
create_time
cwd
exe
io_counters
ionice
memory_info
memory_info_ex
memory_maps
memory_percent
name
nice
num_ctx_switches
num_handles
num_threads
open_files
pid
ppid
status
threads
username

>>> pythons_psutil[0].memory_info()
pmem(rss=12304384, vms=8912896)

In a stock Windows Python you can use subprocess and csv to parse the output of tasklist.exe:

import subprocess
import csv

p_tasklist = subprocess.Popen('tasklist.exe /fo csv',
                              stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                              universal_newlines=True)

pythons_tasklist = []
for p in csv.DictReader(p_tasklist.stdout):
    if p['Image Name'] == 'python.exe':
        pythons_tasklist.append(p)

>>> print(*sorted(pythons_tasklist[0]), sep='\n')
Image Name
Mem Usage
PID
Session Name
Session#

>>> pythons_tasklist[0]['Mem Usage']
'11,876 K'

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