Problem with subprocess module on Windows with open file in append mode

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:24:23 -0300, MRAB <python at mrabarnett.plus.com>  
escribió:

> Gabriel Genellina wrote:
>> En Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:53:12 -0300, Andrew Savige  
>> <ajsavige at yahoo.com.au> escribió:
>>
>>> When I run this little test program on Linux:
>>>
>>> import subprocess
>>> subprocess.call(["python","-V"], stderr=open("log.tmp","a"))
>>>
>>> the file log.tmp is appended to each time I run it.
>>> When I run it on Windows, however, the file log.tmp gets
>>> overwritten each time I run it.
>>>
>>> Though I can make it append on Windows like this:
>>>
>>> import os
>>> import subprocess
>>> f = open("log.tmp", "a")
>>> f.seek(0, os.SEEK_END)
>>> subprocess.call(["python","-V"], stderr=f)
>>>
>>> I don't understand why that should be necessary.
>>>
>>> Is this a Python/subprocess bug on Windows?
>>  No, it's an "implementation-defined behavior" of the underlying C  
>> library.
> That's strange: whenever I've opened a file for append in Microsoft
> Visual C/C++ (or Python or Delphi, for that matter) on Windows I've
> assumed that the file pointer would be at the end of file, and that's
> always proved to be the case!

Yes, true, I've used a small test program in C and that's indeed the case  
-- forget the "implementation-defined behavior", in any case, it works the  
same way on both platforms.

There is no problem from inside the same process. And the second example  
above shows that the file pointer *is* inherited by the child process when  
explicitely set. After experimenting a bit, looks like the file pointer is  
always at 0 right after opening the file, even for "a" or "a+" modes; it  
is moved at the end-of-file before every write.

I guess, on Windows, the file mode isn't properly recreated on the child  
process, defaulting to "w" for stdout or something like that. This may be  
a bug in the way the subprocess module handles its file arguments (I can  
see that subprocess calls functions like _get_osfhandle and  
DuplicateHandle, and maybe the original file mode is lost after all those  
operations).

-- 
Gabriel Genellina