the _subprocess module

Question

There is a module called _subprocess, as seen in that question.

I was able to import it, but I haven't found any documentation about what is it and how it is different from subprocess.

Anybody here know what this module does?

Answer 1

_subprocess seems to be a Windows-specific C extension module that implements some of the functionality that's used by the subprocess module proper. If you look in the source for subprocess, _subprocess is only referred to inside of if mswindows blocks.

It's a detail of the implementation, and so you definitely shouldn't use it in any actual code (though of course some curiosity is never a bad thing).

Here's the source for `_subprocess'. The comment at the top says

* support routines for subprocess module
*
* Currently, this extension module is only required when using the
* subprocess module on Windows, but in the future, stubs for other
* platforms might be added here as well.