pexpect.exitstatus not working?

[Laszlo Zsolt Nagy]

This function:

def scp(from_path,to_path,pwd):
    """Copy a file with scp."""
    cmd = '/bin/csh -c "scp -q %s %s ; echo XXX"' %(from_path,to_path)
    print cmd
    child = pexpect.spawn(cmd)
    child.expect('Password:')
    child.sendline(pwd)    
    child.expect('XXX')
    return child.exitstatus

always returns None. This one:

def scp(from_path,to_path,pwd):
    """Copy a file with scp."""
    cmd = 'scp -q %s %s ' %(from_path,to_path)
    print cmd
    child = pexpect.spawn(cmd)
    child.expect('Password:')
    child.sendline(pwd)    
    child.interact()
    return child.exitstatus

will return the correct exit status. The big problem is that I would 
like to run this function from a cron job. Inside a cron job, interact() 
will not work because it is not connected to a real terminal. How can I 
get the exit status code? Please help me.

   Les