multi-threaded *nix program needs to spawn an external program/script

[Donn Cave]

Quoth "Jason Orendorff" <jason at jorendorff.com>:
| arbalt at yahoo.com wrote:
| > Would it make sense to add a function to python for *nix systems
| >     that would do the "start an executable file as a new process"?
|
| Try os.spawnv(); it should work for both Unix and Windows.
|   http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/os-process.html

Yes, though according to him, that shouldn't work - he says, on Solaris,
in a threaded program, you mustn't "do anything" between fork and exec,
and fork and exec called separately from Python don't work for him for
that reason.  os.spawnv is implemented in Python.

I think it would be worth a try.  I think os.spawnv will work as well
as os.system.

The next step would be to recode os.spawnve in a C module.  I don't know
anything about this Solaris problem, but if he's right, that would help.
(But then what's wrong with os.system?)

Of course if there's a system or thread library function that addresses
this need, that would obviously be the way to go.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu