All platforms support sockets as *out* file descriptor, and some platforms
allow other types (e.g. regular file, pipe) as well.
+ Cross-platform applications should not use *headers*, *trailers* and *flags*
+ arguments.
+
Availability: Unix.
+ .. note::
+
+ For a higher-level wrapper of :func:`sendfile`, see
+ :mod:`socket.socket.sendfile`.
+
.. versionadded:: 3.3
Availability: Unix.
-.. function:: popen(...)
+.. function:: popen(command, mode='r', buffering=-1)
+
+ Open a pipe to or from *command*. The return value is an open file object
+ connected to the pipe, which can be read or written depending on whether *mode*
+ is ``'r'`` (default) or ``'w'``. The *buffering* argument has the same meaning as
+ the corresponding argument to the built-in :func:`open` function. The
+ returned file object reads or writes text strings rather than bytes.
+
+ The ``close`` method returns :const:`None` if the subprocess exited
+ successfully, or the subprocess's return code if there was an
+ error. On POSIX systems, if the return code is positive it
+ represents the return value of the process left-shifted by one
+ byte. If the return code is negative, the process was terminated
+ by the signal given by the negated value of the return code. (For
+ example, the return value might be ``- signal.SIGKILL`` if the
+ subprocess was killed.) On Windows systems, the return value
+ contains the signed integer return code from the child process.
- Run child processes, returning opened pipes for communications. These functions
- are described in section :ref:`os-newstreams`.
+ This is implemented using :class:`subprocess.Popen`; see that class's
+ documentation for more powerful ways to manage and communicate with
+ subprocesses.
.. function:: spawnl(mode, path, ...)