noob: subprocess clarification

[moogyd at yahoo.co.uk]

On 14 Sep, 22:06, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfr... at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Sep 2008 02:29:52 -0700 (PDT), moo... at yahoo.co.uk declaimed
> the following in comp.lang.python:
>
> > Can somebody please clarify what the shell=True does, and whether I am
> > using it correctly.
>
>         What part of:
>
> """
> On Unix, with shell=False (default): In this case, the Popen class uses
> os.execvp() to execute the child program. args should normally be a
> sequence. A string will be treated as a sequence with the string as the
> only item (the program to execute).
>
> On Unix, with shell=True: If args is a string, it specifies the command
> string to execute through the shell. If args is a sequence, the first
> item specifies the command string, and any additional items will be
> treated as additional shell arguments.
> """
>
> is giving problems?

I assume that this is sarchasm :-)

>
>         For the most part, as I recall, "shell=True" allows you to invoke
> commands that are built-in/native to the default shell, or even a shell
> script. False requires the specified command to be a stand-alone
> executable program.
> --