[Python-Dev] Of what use is commands.getstatus() (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Fri, 23 May 2003 09:11:35 -0400

I was reading the docs for the commands module and noticed getstatus() seems to be completely unrelated to getstatusoutput() and getoutput(). I thought, "I'll correct the docs. They must be wrong." Then I looked at commands.py and saw the docs are correct. It's the function definition which is weird. Of what use is it to return 'ls -ld file'? Based on its name I would have guessed its function was

def getoutput(cmd): """Return status of executing cmd in a shell.""" return getstatusoutput(cmd)[0] This particular function dates from 1990, so it clearly can't just be deleted, but it seems completely superfluous to me, especially given the existence of os.stat, os.listdir, etc. Should it be deprecated or modified to do (what I think is) the obvious thing?

That whole module wasn't thought out very well. I recently tried to use it and found that the strip of the trailing \n on getoutput() is also a counterproductive feature. I suggest that someone should design a replacement, perhaps to live in shutil, and then we can deprecate it. Until then I would leave it alone. Certainly don't "fix" it by doing something incompatible.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)