[Python-Dev] 'commands' module on Win32

[Nick Coghlan]

Bug #1008275 refers to attempting to run commands.getstatusoutput() on 
win32, and the fact that it breaks.

The reason it breaks is because it expects a posix shell, and this is 
noted in the documentation for the module (or rather, the module is 
noted as only supported on Unix).

commands.getstatusoutput() and commands.getoutput() can easily be fixed 
to run properly on Windows (using "if os.name == 'posix'" to select the 
correct formatting for the shell command). Only the first one actually 
needs to be fixed, since getoutput() just returns the second element of 
the tuple returned by getstatusoutput()

The dirty holdout is commands.getstatus().

This function does *not* simply return the first element of the tuple 
returned by commands.getstatusoutput() as you might expect. Instead of 
returning the status code resulting from executing its argument as a 
shell command, it insteads calls 'ls -ld <arg>' to get the file 
information. (And this is a function in the commands module exactly why?)

This actually works for me, but only because I have MSYS & MINGW 
installed :)

Anyway, getstatusoutput() and getoutput() seem like very handy ways to 
make a command line call and get its results. I'd never seen them before 
because they're squirelled away as Unix specific modules.

Are there any objections to changing this module so that only 
getstatus() is marked as Unix specific?

I ask, because I don't want to start work on a documentation patch if 
the idea is a non-starter (the code & test changes are already done, 
butI think the hardest part of the exercise will be moving the 
documentation out of the 'Unix-specific' part of the doc tree).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan               |  Eugene, Oregon
Email: ncoghlan at email.com  |             USA