os.system

[pehr anderson]

Dear Matthias,

In general, calling os.system causes the system to start a shell
which then processes the command string.
On linux this takes no time at all.  On windows I can see that
they may not have optmized the shell, especially since the shell
under window has so many glaring deficiencies.

All I can offer is an explanation, not a speedup. 
Perhaps you could find a way to talk to a browser that 
may already be started?

I'd recommend browsing "Python for Win32" if you are serious
about surviving under windows.

	-pehr



Matthias Huening wrote:
> 
> Some days ago somebody mentioned the possibility to start the standard
> browser through os.system on a Windows machine:
> 
> import os
> os.system('start http://www.python.org/')
> 
> That works just fine, when I start it from the command line in a DOS box.
> But from IDLE it takes a few seconds for the system to respond. Could
> somebody explain why an whether there is a speed up for this?
> 
> Thanks,
> Matthias