Definitely a bug. The path search should silently skip directories it can't
access.

On Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:05 AM R. David Murray <report@bugs.python.org>
wrote:

>
> R. David Murray added the comment:
>
> So, two interesting questions: does this in fact match the behavior of
> os._execvpe, and does it match the behavior of the shell?  The latter would
> appear to be false, and could arguably be claimed to be a bug.  If we agree
> that it is, we need to learn what the behavior of the shell is in a bunch
> of corner cases (only inaccessible directories on path, only match is
> accessible but not executable, etc).
>
> If this is a bug I'd guess it applies to all supported python versions.
>
> Note that it should be possible to reproduce this using a single user, so
> I've changed the title accordingly.
>
> ----------
> nosy: +gps
> title: PermissionError in subprocess.check_output() when running as a
> different user (not login shell) -> PermissionError in
> subprocess.check_output() when an inaccessible directory on the path
>
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <http://bugs.python.org/issue25481>
> _______________________________________
>