How to capture output of os.spawnv()?

[Carel Fellinger]

Donn Cave <donn at drizzle.com> wrote:
...
> Check it out.  Not popen, but as they say, "popen2 et al."
> It will exec the command on its own, no shell, if you give it
> an argument list.  If you give it a string, it will use the
> shell.

How is one supposed to know this?  (excluding reading the source or
remembering from the last time you brought this up:)

I've reread the fine manuals, but can't find a clue hinting at this
interesting behaviour.
-- 
groetjes, carel