[ python-Bugs-1030388 ] os.system exhausts file descriptors

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Bugs item #1030388, was opened at 2004-09-18 17:30
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Category: Python Library
Group: Python 2.3
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Eray Ozkural (exa)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: os.system exhausts file descriptors

Initial Comment:
this is a strange behavior that i could not make a concise test case 
for. 
 
i wrote a simple script to run several hundreds of jobs consecutively 
using os.system() call. on some occasions, especially when I use 
CTRL-C to break all of them to get out of the script (I didn't handle 
any signals...), i couldn't run the script again. the system gave a 
'too many files open on the system' on a linux 2.4 (debian) system. 
 
suspecting that this might be due to os.system i wrote a simple run 
function that uses os.popen() instead. 
def run(cmd): 
    a = os.popen(cmd) 
    lines = a.readlines() 
    return not a.close() 
 
and the problem never occured again. 
 
i can't tell why using os.system can cause that, i had never 
encountered this error on linux, to be honest. 

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