Clarify fd inheritance when close_fds=False. (GH-6240)

Clarify the subprocess documentation.
(cherry picked from commit dfb6e54dd8dbd735f55109ad8ee9dfcb6178ede9)

Co-authored-by: Gregory P. Smith <greg@krypto.org>

diff --git a/Doc/library/subprocess.rst b/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
index db7a88af6bea0890ba31e73cba87b49aa0956146..fbf2c3d9fac9a26dcb3e593ae38551fbab947a58 100644 (file)
--- a/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
@@ -459,7 +459,10 @@ functions.
       common use of *preexec_fn* to call os.setsid() in the child.
 
    If *close_fds* is true, all file descriptors except :const:`0`, :const:`1` and
-   :const:`2` will be closed before the child process is executed.
+   :const:`2` will be closed before the child process is executed.  Otherwise
+   when *close_fds* is false, file descriptors obey their inheritable flag
+   as described in :ref:`fd_inheritance`.
+
    On Windows, if *close_fds* is true then no handles will be inherited by the
    child process unless explicitly passed in the ``handle_list`` element of
    :attr:`STARTUPINFO.lpAttributeList`, or by standard handle redirection.