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To: python-list@python.org
From: Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu>
Subject: Re: spawnl issues with Win 7 access rights
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:11:15 -0400
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On 10/25/2011 8:19 AM, Tim Golden wrote:
> On 25/10/2011 08:01, Propad wrote:
>> Thnx again for all the answers. As stated before, I'm limited in my
>> options. One of them just might be to switch to Python 2.5, rewrite
>> the code that crashes using the subprocess module, and then somehow
>> patch the library I use (which I'm not suposed to do, but... oh
>> well :-)). I can just hope subrocess was already mature adn offering
>> the relevant functionality in 2.5.
>
> I must admit I'm more than slightly surprised by this. My test case
> is to use os.spawnl to run c:/windows/notepad.exe. From the docs,
> I would expect to use os.spawnl (os.P_WAIT, "c:/windows/notepad.exe").
> (I only want to open notepad.exe; there's no need for additional args).
>
> These are my test cases:
>
> (1)
>
> os.spawnl (
> os.P_WAIT,
> "c:/windows/notepad.exe"
> )
>
> (2)
>
> os.spawnl (
> os.P_WAIT,
> "c:/windows/notepad.exe",
> "c:/windows/notepad.exe"
> )
>
> (3)
>
> os.spawnl (
> os.P_WAIT,
> "c:/windows/notepad.exe",
> "c:/windows/notepad.exe",
> "c:/temp.txt"
> )
>
>
> And the results:
>
> ==============================================================
> Python | Platform | Case | Result
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> 2.2.2 | WinXP | 1 | Works (empty notepad)
> 2.2.2 | WinXP | 2 | Works (empty notepad)
> 2.2.2 | WinXP | 3 | Works (notepad temp.txt)
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> 2.2.2 | Win7 | 1 | OSError
> 2.2.2 | Win7 | 2 | Works (empty notepad)
> 2.2.2 | Win7 | 3 | Works (notepad temp.txt)
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> 2.7.2 | WinXP | 1 | Crashes
> 2.7.2 | WinXP | 2 | Works (empty notepad)
> 2.7.2 | WinXP | 3 | Works (notepad temp.txt)
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> 2.7.2 | Win7 | 1 | Crashes
> 2.7.2 | Win7 | 2 | Works (empty notepad)
> 2.7.2 | Win7 | 3 | Works (notepad temp.txt)
> ==============================================================
>
>
> Add to this a look at the mscrt source which ships with VS 2008
> and the MSDN docs for spawnl:
>
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wweek9sc%28v=vs.80%29.aspx
>
> and we see that the first args parameter must be the same as the
> path parameter.
>
> FWIW, at no extra cost, I went to the trouble of testing it on some
> flavour of Linux with Python 2.6 and got the same results
> as per 2.2.2 on WinXP. (Basically: everything works).
>
> Which leaves us with http://bugs.python.org/issue8036 in which recent
> versions of Python crash when the (arbitrary) second parameter isn't
> passed. And with an inexplicable behaviour change between the same
> version of Python running on WinXP and on Win7.

OP reports 2.6 with XP works. Did that use VS 2005? Maybe C runtime 
changed (regressed). Also, could there be a 32 v. 64 bit issue?

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy