AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'fork'

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 5:17 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
>> But with Roy's suggestion, testing for the existence of os.fork is not
>> sufficient, because it will exist even on platforms where fork doesn't
>> exist. So testing that os.fork exists is not sufficient to tell whether or
>> not you can actually fork.
>
> Windows:
>
> Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Nov 27 2010, 18:30:46) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license()" for more information.
>>>> import os
>>>> os.fork
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in <module>
>     os.fork
> AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'fork'
>
>
> Linux:
>
> $ python
> Python 2.7.8 (default, Jul  4 2014, 13:08:34)
> [GCC 4.9.0] on linux2
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>> import os
>>>> os.fork
> <built-in function fork>
>>>>
>
>
> So yes, I continue to miss something...

I think the bit you're missing is the "with Roy's suggestion" bit, at
which os.fork() would be callable and would raise a different error.

It's of course possible for fork() to fail (no memory, ulimit hit, etc
etc etc), but I would expect that the presence of os.fork should
correspond perfectly to the API's availability (at least as detected
by Python's compilation testing).

ChrisA