> I (as a programmer) have never seen the specific code for python's
> mkdir function, And I have no way to know whether I should presume
> that mkdir in python works the same way as the gnu command or not.
> Unless it is documented that is.

You should assume that Python's mkdir does the same as Linux' mkdir 
system call (which is different from the mkdir utility). You can
see mkdir's document with "man 2 mkdir", or on

http://linux.die.net/man/2/mkdir