[New-bugs-announce] [issue38802] Clearer wording of os.WNOHANG documentation to avoid misinterpretation

[Michael Yagliyan]

New submission from Michael Yagliyan <myagliyan1 at bloomberg.net>:

For versions 2.7 through 3.9 of https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html, os.WNOHANG is described as returning (0, 0) when no child process status is immediately available.

However, both os.wait3() and os.wait4() return 3-element tuples and are described as being similar to os.waitpid().  This, combined with the os.WNOHANG documentation being somewhat open to interpretation, makes it very easy to conclude (incorrectly) that wait3(WNOHANG) and wait4(WNOHANG) would return (0, 0) when no child process status is immediately available.  In fact, they would return a 3-element tuple with the first 2 elements being 0.

I suggest rephrasing the os.WNOHANG documentation to the following (or something similar):

"The option for waitpid() to return immediately if no child process status is available immediately, in which case the function returns (0, 0).  Correspondingly, wait3() and wait4() would return 3-element tuples with the first 2 elements being 0 and the last being a default-constructed resource usage information object."

Unfortunately that last part about the default-constructed resource usage information object is only true after this recent bug fix:
https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/15111/files

So I'll leave it to y'all to decide how to update the documentation since my proposed phrasing is dependent on that bug fix.

----------
assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation
messages: 356627
nosy: bbmmy, docs at python
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Clearer wording of os.WNOHANG documentation to avoid misinterpretation
type: enhancement
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.5, Python 3.6, Python 3.7, Python 3.8, Python 3.9

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue38802>
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