> I am not sure that I should see there. There is discussion of DOS,
> which is not supported, also some complain about Windows execv
> function, which deprecated since VC++ 2005 (which I hope also not
> supported). Can you be more specific?

_spawn*() and _exec*() are implemented by the C runtime library.  spawn*() and execv() are (deprecated) aliases.

The the first message is about someone's attempt to work around the problems with embedded spaces and double quotes by writing a function to escape each argument.  He says he had a partial success.

Surely this is basic reading comprehension?

> > Note that on Windows exec*() is useless: it just starts a subprocess and 
> > exits the current process.  You can use subprocess to get the same effect.
>
> Are you describing Windows implementation of _exec()
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/431x4c1w.aspx or current
> Python implementation?

The Windows implementaion of _exec().

> > Just use subprocess instead which gets this stuff right.
>
> subprocess doesn't replace os.exec*, see issue19060

On Unix subprocess does not replace os.exec*().  That is because on Unix exec*() replaces the current process with a new process with the *same pid*.  subprocess cannot do this.

But on Windows os.exec*() just starts an independent process with a *different pid* and exits the current process.  The line

    os.execv(path, args)

is equivalent to

    os.spawnv(os.P_NOWAIT, path, args)
    os._exit(0)