^C and os.system()

[Douglas Alan]

Greetings.  Is it considered a bug or a feature that if I type ^C at a
Python program that is in the middle of executing a call to
os.system(), the Python program never seems to see the SIGINT signal?
Instead, only the process created by os.system() receives the signal.
Consequently, if I have a Python script that executes a program
repeatedly for a list of files, for instance, I can't kill the Python
script with ^C.

Personally, I find this kind of annoying.  This is using Python 1.5.1
under Solaris 2.6.  Please forgive me if this a bug that has already
been fixed under 1.5.2.

Also, when I have the Python program check the return status of a
command invoked via os.system() and subsequently killed with ^C,
instead of getting back 0x0002, as would be expected from a process
killed by SIGINT, I usually get back 0x8200.  Sometimes I get back
0xd000.  Only infrequently do I get back the 0x0002 that I would
expect.

None of these problems occur if I use commands.getstatusoutput()
instead of os.system(), so I guess I will stick with getstatusoutput()
for the time being.

|>oug
   http://space.mit.edu/~nessus