[Python-Dev] FW: Fixing os.popen on Win32 => is the win32pipe stuff going to be adopted? (original) (raw)

James C. Ahlstrom jim@interet.com
Fri, 10 Mar 2000 16:14:45 -0500

Tim Peters wrote:

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.] > Tim (& others), > Would this additional text be sufficient for the os.popen() > documentation? > > \strong{Note:} This function behaves unreliably under Windows > due to the native implementation of \cfunction{popen()}. Yes, that's good! If Mark/Bill's alternatives don't make it in, would also be good to point to the PythonWin extensions (although MarkH will have to give us the Official Name for that).

Well, it looks like this thread has fizzled out. But what did we decide?

Changing the docs to say popen() "doesn't work reliably" is a little weak. Maybe removing popen() is better, and demanding that Windows users use win32pipe.

I played around with a patch to posixmodule.c which eliminates _popen() and implements os.popen() using CreatePipe(). It sort of works on NT and fails on 95. Anyway, I am stuck on how to make a Python file object from a pipe handle.

Would it be a good idea to extract the Wisdom from win32pipe and re-implement os.popen() either in C or by using win32pipe directly? Using C is simple and to the point.

I feel Tim's original complaint that popen() is a Problem still hasn't been fixed.

JimA