Editing text with an external editor in Python

[Roy Smith]

In article <54049ab7$0$29972$c3e8da3$5496439d at news.astraweb.com>,
 Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:

> import tempfile
> 
> def edit(editor, content=''):
>     f = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(mode='w+')
>     [...]
>     command = editor + " " + f.name
>     status = os.system(command)

Hmmm.  Didn't we just have a thread about passing external data to 
shells?

$ mkdir '/tmp/;rm -rf;'
$ TMPDIR='/tmp/;rm -rf;' python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Sep 26 2013, 20:03:06) 
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import tempfile
>>> f = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile()
>>> f.name
'/tmp/;rm -rf;/tmpW8HFTr'
>>>