Is it possible to specify a unique name to terminal windows to run the command via python?

Question

I have to run terminal codes via os.system() in Python. Two commands should be run in two terminals separately. Is it possible to specify a unique name/ID to the terminal windows to run each command in its specified terminal window?

Answer 1

Each terminal you open gets a uniquely numbered file (a pseudoterminal slave (PTS) device to be exact) in /dev/pts/ with whom it can be recognized and addressed. To get the correspondent filename of a terminal window you can use e.g. tty (see this answer for alternatives; read man pts for more):

$ tty
/dev/pts/4

You can use this filename for instance to redirect output to a different terminal window like so:

$ echo test >/dev/pts/4  # run anywhere
test                     # printed in terminal window 4

You can't really run a command in another terminal, simply because it's not the terminal that runs a command, but rather the shell which normally runs in a terminal. You can however emulate the behaviour of a command run in a terminal window with redirections as follows (taken from Linux pseudo-terminals: executing string sent from one terminal in another):

echo test </dev/pts/4 &>/dev/pts/4

If you want to display the command you ran as well I recommand writing a function (How do I use $* while omitting certain input variables like $1 and $2 in bash script?), e.g.:

run_in(){
  t=/dev/pts/$1 &&
  echo "${*:2}" >$t &&
  eval "${@:2}" <$t &>$t
}

In one line:

run_in(){ t=/dev/pts/$1&&echo "${*:2}" >$t&&eval "${@:2}" <$t &>$t;}

Use it like so:

$ run_in 4 echo test  # run anywhere
$ echo test           # printed in terminal window 4 (if prompt was already there)
test                  # printed in terminal window 4

In this scenario the only unknown are the /dev/pts/? numbers that your Python program shall use. One possible way to get these numbers is to launch your own terminal windows, which will output their 'numbers' in to a file, then you can read it ^[ref]. Let's assume you are using gnome-terminal, the relevant part of the Python code could be something as follow ^[ref]:

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
import subprocess

os.system("gnome-terminal -x bash -c 'tty > /tmp/my-app-tty-1; exec bash'")
my_terminal_1 = subprocess.Popen(["cat", "/tmp/my-app-tty-1"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
command = "echo Test on: $(date) >" + my_terminal_1
print my_terminal_1
print command
os.system(command)

If it is a Perl script ^[ref]

#!/usr/bin/perl
os.system("gnome-terminal -x bash -c 'tty > /tmp/my-app-tty-1; exec bash'");
my $my_terminal_1 = `cat /tmp/my-app-tty-1`;
my $command = "echo Test on: \$\(date\) > $my_terminal_1";
print ("$my_terminal_1");
print ("$command");
os.system("$command");