### 6.8.3.6 Replacing popen2.*

Note: If the cmd argument to popen2 functions is a string, the command is executed through /bin/sh. If it is a list, the command is directly executed.

    (child_stdout, child_stdin) = popen2.popen2("somestring", bufsize, mode)
    ==>
    p = Popen(["somestring"], shell=True, bufsize=bufsize
              stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, close_fds=True)
    (child_stdout, child_stdin) = (p.stdout, p.stdin)

    (child_stdout, child_stdin) = popen2.popen2(["mycmd", "myarg"], bufsize, mode)
    ==>
    p = Popen(["mycmd", "myarg"], bufsize=bufsize,
              stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, close_fds=True)
    (child_stdout, child_stdin) = (p.stdout, p.stdin)

The popen2.Popen3 and popen3.Popen4 basically works as subprocess.Popen, except that:

- subprocess.Popen raises an exception if the execution fails

- the capturestderr argument is replaced with the stderr argument.

- stdin=PIPE and stdout=PIPE must be specified.

- popen2 closes all file descriptors by default, but you have to specify close_fds=True with subprocess.Popen.