eryksun added the comment:
Here's the rationale given for ignoring SHELL in POSIX system():
One reviewer suggested that an implementation of system() might
want to use an environment variable such as SHELL to determine
which command interpreter to use. The supposed implementation
eryksun added the comment:
I expect Popen's shell=True option to use the same shell as os.system. The
POSIX spec for the [system function][1] requires running sh, as follows:
execl(, "sh", "-c", command, (char *)0);
glibc uses "/bin/sh" for the shell path. Modifying the SHELL environment
R. David Murray added the comment:
Thanks for the suggestion, but that would make programs using subprocess
non-portable. There is an open issue to use the *default* shell instead of
hard coding it (because the sh-alike is not at /bin/sh on, eg, Android), but
using the user shell would break
New submission from Jan Studený:
According to POSIX specification the pathname of user shell is stored in SHELL
(environmental variable, see
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap08.html#tag_08)
so I think that is good idea to use that pathname instead of hardcoded on
