os.popen4 and exit codes

[David Bolen]

"Donn Cave" <donn at u.washington.edu> writes:

> On UNIX, popen3 is implemented in Python, out of fork and pipe functions,
> and unlike popen it returns 100% stock, common file objects.
> 
> To get exit status, you have to use the Popen3 class explicitly, so you
> can call its wait() function.

Right - the Windows behavior is sort of a kludge (albeit a convenient
one) because of the lack of an equivalent capability in terms of how
the child process is controlled.  Earlier implementations (the
os.popen# functions originated as a contribution to the win32all
package) lost the exit code under Windows entirely :-)

Unfortunately, it makes handling this platform-dependent, but at least
you can get the exit codes in general.

--
-- David
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