[Python-Dev] The os module, unix and win32 (original) (raw)

Jeremy Hylton jeremy at alum.mit.edu
Thu Jan 8 21:28:06 EST 2004

On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 17:06, Barry Scott wrote:

Why does popen5 needs a C implementation on windows where as on unix it can be implemented in python?

Answer: because the unix API is in standard python where as the windows one is not. win32all covers a huge number of API functions, more then would be sane to add to os. But would there be any mileage in added enough from win32all to allow problems like popen5 to be implemented? There is already the reg module that has some win32 functions in it on the standard install.

In principle, this sounds like a nice idea. If the majority of Python's users are on win32 systems, it seems only reasonable to have some support for native OS functionality for win32. We've got it for Mac and Linux after all.

I suppose a primary concern would be how hard it is to maintain the code and whether it would be tied to particular versions of Windows. The fact that you can get win32all for Python 1.5.2 through 2.3 suggests that these aren't insurmountable problems.

Jeremy

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