The spawnv and spawnve functions in the os module look useful, but the lib manual documentation is rather sparse about their semantics, referring the reader to the VC++ Runtime Library for more info. Perhaps this is poetic justice for us Unix bigots (since many people often complain that the Python library and docs are too Unix-centric), but it would be useful to know what the return values (if any) of these functions are and what the related P_* constants mean. I can guess about P_WAIT and P_NOWAIT, but the meanings of the others aren't obvious to a person without Windows experience. Skip
Skip Montanaro writes:
The spawnv and spawnve functions in the os module look useful, but the lib manual documentation is rather sparse about their semantics, referring the reader to the VC++ Runtime Library for more info. Perhaps this is poetic
Are you looking at the development docs, or the 2.1.1 docs? http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/lib/lib.html If you're looking at the devel docs and still find things are missing, please file a bug report with specific info about what you think is missing, and assign it to me. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> PythonLabs at Zope Corporation
>> The spawnv and spawnve functions in the os module look useful, ... Fred> Are you looking at the development docs, or the 2.1.1 docs? I was looking at the 2.1.1 docs, but the development docs have the same problem w.r.t. the P_* constants. (The spawn* docs look much better.) I filed a bug report about the P_* documentation. Skip
[Skip Montanaro]
The spawnv and spawnve functions in the os module look useful, but the lib manual documentation is rather sparse about their semantics, referring the reader to the VC++ Runtime Library for more info.
Gigabytes of MS docs (including all the VC docs) are available online for free: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ Since the MS docs are copyrighted, we can't just copy them into our docs.
... I can guess about P_WAIT and P_NOWAIT, but the meanings of the others aren't obvious to a person without Windows experience.
They aren't obvious to anyone, and if you want to use the non-obvious ones, there are reams of MS docs you should understand first: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vccore98/H TML/_crt__spawn.2c_._wspawn_functions.asp> How is Fred going to summarize all that (all of it is necessary in the end!), without running afoul of copyright? Alas, it can take a long time to learn how to find this stuff (the doc collection is massive). In general, the place to start for C library docs is: Visual Tools and Languages -> Visual Studio 6.0 -> Vlsual C and C++ 6.0 -> Product Documentation -> Visual C++ Programmer's Guide -> Run-Time Library Reference
"Tim" == Tim Peters <tim.one@home.com> writes:
Tim> [Skip Montanaro] >> The spawnv and spawnve functions in the os module look useful, but >> the lib manual documentation is rather sparse about their semantics, >> referring the reader to the VC++ Runtime Library for more info. Tim> Gigabytes of MS docs (including all the VC docs) are available Tim> online for free: Tim> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ Tim> Since the MS docs are copyrighted, we can't just copy them into our Tim> docs. ... Tim> <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vccore98/HT...> Perhaps the Python docs could have a "See Also" that refers to this page? Tim> How is Fred going to summarize all that (all of it is necessary in Tim> the end!), without running afoul of copyright? It appears that in the development docs Fred has done a good job of summarizing the spawn functions' semantics. It's only the P_* constants whose definition is still left unclear. Copyright has the notion of "fair use". Since the information extracted would be so small w.r.t. the whole work from which it was extracted and it would not be used for commercial gain (at least, not directly), I would think that describing the five constants would fall under fair use guidelines. Tim> Alas, it can take a long time to learn how to find this stuff (the Tim> doc collection is massive). In general, the place to start for C Tim> library docs is: Thanks, but I'm not really interested in programming Windows, just knowing what the stuff imported from Windows means. ;-) Skip
participants (3)
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Fred L. Drake, Jr. -
Skip Montanaro -
Tim Peters