Can't execute an external program !

[Neil Hodgson]

> >    All that is really needed is for Sam Rushing's calldll/windll to be
> > included in the standard distribution. Then any required OS calls could
be
> > implemented in Python rather than requiring an extension written in C. I
> > know it opens Python up to the world of untyped, unchecked hardware
> pointers
> > but the increase in capability is large.
> This would not help for the popen case, because on win95/98 (not on NT)
> an additional executable helper program is needed.

   It works for me without the shim. The problem as stated in MSDN is
"""On Windows 95, however, this design causes the parent process to hang
because the redirection pipe does not close when a redirected MS-DOS
application or batch file exits. """
   So what I do is poll the pipe. If there is no data available, check to
see if the child process is dead. If the process is dead then a short delay
is executed and then any remaining output grabbed.

   Neil