Thanks, guys. MRAB-RedHat 6 64-bit, Python 2.6.5 JM-Here's the relevant stuff from my last try. I've also tried with subprocess.call. Just now I tried shell=True, but it made no difference.
sticking a print(out) in there just prints a blank line in between each iteration. It's not until the 5 trials are finished that I am told: download failed, etc. from os.path import exists from subprocess import call from subprocess import Popen from shlex import split from time import sleep while (exists(file)==0) and (nTries < 5): a = Popen(split('htar -xvf ' + htarArgs), stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE) (out,err) = a.communicate() if exists(file)==0: nTries += 1 sleep(0.5) if exists(file)==0: # now that the file should be moved print('download failed: ' + file) return 1 I've also tried using shell=True with popopen. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list