why does close() fail miserably on popen with exit code -1 ?!

[Terry Reedy]

"Atanas Banov" <enterr at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1140465047.381586.224530 at g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> my gripe is about exit with MINUS ONE, not +1. see my post again.

FWIW, I reproduced the error message for -1 (and the no error for -2, -3) 
in the Idle Python Shell uder Win XP home.

tjr