Issue 7126: Contradictory documentation for os.putenv and os.system (original) (raw)

The documentation for os.putenv states that "changes to the environment affect subprocesses started with os.system(), popen() or fork() and execv()" and "assignments to items in os.environ are automatically translated into corresponding calls to putenv()".

However, the documentation for os.system() states "Changes to os.environ ... are not reflected in the environment of the executed command."

A simple test confirms that the os.putenv documentation is the correct one:

Python 2.6

import os os.environ['foo'] = 'bar' os.system('echo $foo') bar 0