Can a Python script identify itself in memory at runtime?

Question

I am looking for methods other than file locking to make sure that only one instance of a Python script is being run at the same time.

Is there a way to identify a currently running script in memory? Perhaps by setting a flag of some kind that other instances can read so they can exit?

possible duplicate of [Python: single instance of program](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/380870/python-single-instance-of-program) — NPE, Dec 20 '11 at 16:05

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 20 '11 at 16:06

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If you are running on Linux, /dev/shm is a tmpfs partition on most distros. This means that any files stored there only exist in memory and are not written to disk.

answered Dec 20 '11 at 16:06

zje

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 20 '11 at 20:27

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If you are running on Windows, use a Mutex. You can use ctypes to call the Win32 APIs: CreateMutex, WaitForSingleObject, and ReleaseMutex.

answered Dec 20 '11 at 20:27

cdarke

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Can a Python script identify itself in memory at runtime?

2 Answers2