How to call a system command with flexibility on Windows

[Francis Avila]

Peter Hansen wrote in message <40031266.B76A5B6F at engcorp.com>...
>It can be done on Windows, although at the very least you cannot redirect
>stderr properly from the command line on Win98....  not sure about other
>issues.

Win98 is particularly bad:
>>> os.system('dir')
#output snipped
0 #return code
>>> os.system('foo')
Bad command or file name
0
>>> 

>I'm pretty sure return codes are available with os.system() under Windows,
>but I rarely use them and forget any relevant details.
-- 
Francis Avila