The documentation in Python 2.6 claims os.popen is deprecated [1]. This
is probably a false claim. I think that at some point os.popen got
confused with os.popen2, os.popen3, os.popen4 and the popen2 module, all
of which are correctly deprecated.

I bring three forward three pieces of evidence that os.popen is *not*
deprecated:

i) In Python 3.1, unlike the others, os.popen is still present and is
not even deprecated. [2]

ii) Unlike the others, using os.popen does not raise a DeprecationWarning;

iii) Unlike the others, its implementation is lifted straight from the
posix module.

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[1] http://docs.python.org/2.6/library/os.html#os.popen
[2] http://docs.python.org/3.1/library/os.html#os.plock