readwhizzifest.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os


# open the whizzifest.txt file that has been manually generated. This 
# puts the file into a list named content, each line being its own item.
with open('whizzifest.txt') as w:
        content = w.readlines()

# take each element from the list 'content' and split it where the 
# character '|' appears. This is part of a new list called 'programs'. 
# Each item in the list is a list of two items. [x][0] is the location 
# of the file and [x][1] is the name of the program.
programs = [elem.strip().split('|') for elem in content]



# runs the unix script to output the results of top into top.txt
#os.system("top -n 1 -b > top.txt")
os.system("ps -ef > ps.txt")

# create an empty list to be populated with the results of parsing top.txt
tst = []

# from top.txt, parse each line to get the name of the process and append it to the e$
with open('ps.txt', 'r') as input:
        for line in input:
                newline = line.split(' ')
                tst.append(newline[-1].strip())

# create an empty list to be populated by the subset of all processes which are not r$
notrunning = ""

# check to see if the processes from the input match the processes running. Output th$
for item in programs:
        if item[0] not in tst:
                notrunning += " " + item[0]


# run script that initiates programs that are not running, but should be
os.system("python " + notrunning)