[Python-Dev] Of what use is commands.getstatus()

[Guido van Rossum]

> I was reading the docs for the commands module and noticed getstatus() seems
> to be completely unrelated to getstatusoutput() and getoutput().  I thought,
> "I'll correct the docs.  They must be wrong."  Then I looked at commands.py
> and saw the docs are correct.  It's the function definition which is weird.
> Of what use is it to return 'ls -ld file'?  Based on its name I would have
> guessed its function was
> 
>     def getoutput(cmd):
>         """Return status of executing cmd in a shell."""
>         return getstatusoutput(cmd)[0]
> 
> This particular function dates from 1990, so it clearly can't just be
> deleted, but it seems completely superfluous to me, especially given the
> existence of os.stat, os.listdir, etc.  Should it be deprecated or modified
> to do (what I think is) the obvious thing?

That whole module wasn't thought out very well.  I recently tried to
use it and found that the strip of the trailing \n on getoutput() is
also a counterproductive feature.  I suggest that someone should
design a replacement, perhaps to live in shutil, and then we can
deprecate it.  Until then I would leave it alone.  Certainly don't
"fix" it by doing something incompatible.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)