Restarting a self-updating python script

Question

I have written a script that will keep itself up to date by downloading the latest version from a website and overwriting the running script.

I am not sure what the

Answer 1

In Linux, or any other form of unix, os.execl and friends are a good choice for this -- you just need to re-exec sys.executable with the same parameters it was executed with last time (sys.argv, more or less) or any variant thereof if you need to inform your next incarnation that it's actually a restart. On Windows, os.spawnl (and friends) is about the best you can do (though it will transiently take more time and memory than os.execl and friends would during the transition).