subprocess considered harmfull?

[Uri Nix]

Hi all,

 I've been trying to use (Python 2.4 on WinXP) the subprocess module to
execute a shell command (nmake in this case), and pass its output to a
higher level.

 Using the following snippet:
  p =
subprocess.Popen(nmake,stderr=subprocess.PIPE,stdout=subprocess.PIPE, \
                       universal_newlines=True, bufsize=1)
  os.sys.stdout.writelines(p.stdout)
  os.sys.stdout.writelines(p.stderr)
 Works fine on the command line, but fails when called from within
Visual Studio, with the following error:
  File "C:\Python24\lib\subprocess.py", line 549, in __init__
    (p2cread, p2cwrite,
  File "C:\Python24\lib\subprocess.py", line 609, in _get_handles
    p2cread = self._make_inheritable(p2cread)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\subprocess.py", line 650, in _make_inheritable
    DUPLICATE_SAME_ACCESS)
TypeError: an integer is required

 If I replace the functionality with:
  p = os.popen4(nmake)
  # p[1] = stdout_and_stderr result pipe
  p[1].flush()
  os.sys.stdout.writelines(p[1].readlines())
 All is well.

 I have a feeling this has been encountered before (by googling here),
but didn't see any concise answer as to subprocess' robustness.
 So what is the matter here? And should I consider the subprocess
module still unstable?

Cheers,
 Uri