I wonder if a post/question about how shell=True works and what it does, exactly, would be of interest. My specific example is the Python 3 subprocess library, but other languages probably have similar functionalities.
What this keyword does has always been a bit of a mystery to be, but I've never really investigated it.
@StephenKitt Yes, thank you for that link. I was looking for a more general perspective though. Like for example, what's actually going on under the hood.
I don't even really know what Popen does. Perhaps I did once.
Some stuff is easy to forget.
@StephenKitt Thank you taking the time to explain.
I suppose in the shell=False case Python invokes the program with the arguments directly. I see that would be workable if the program is a C program. But I'm sketchy how that would work if it wasn't.
So, I thought I had a good understanding of this, but just ran a test (in response to a conversation where I disagreed with someone) and found that my understanding is flawed...
In as much detail as possible what exactly happens when I execute a file in my shell? What I mean is, if I type: ./som...
So the execve system call (I suppose it's a system call) handles both the binary case and the hashbang case. And if those both don't work, it passes it back to the shell, assuming there is a shell to pass it back to.
@FaheemMitha yes, of course, but behaviour described in POSIX isn’t described as a target to reach, it’s described as the common behaviour of existing systems (at the time when it’s documented)
@FaheemMitha as far as possible, yes, excluding systems whose behaviour is too different; differences are either documented (if that’s possible) or defined as implementation-specific
I spend my time hopping between different Linux systems, and there are many variations which would probably affect the results of running the POSIX conformance tests.
@StephenKitt Oh. I thought they were all pretty much the same.
It certainly seems like that from my perspective. Though it's been a while since I used anything but Debian. It's been an isolated existence for a while now.
So if we were to have a tag, that should be adobe-acrobat-reader anyway, and I just don't see any point in having the tag at all. We currently have 9 questions tagged with it, and of those, only two seem to actually asking anything to do with Acrobat. The rest seem better served with the generic pdf tag.
IIRC they used to be the same application but you just don't have access the edit functionality with the free version and then I guess they split reader into it's own application at some point, I still refer to it as acrobat though
This question is about reading a password-protected file created using Adobe Acrobat on Windows. This is one way in which the tag adobe-acrobat appears to have been made relevant to this site. It's that question's only tag. If we want to get rid of it, should it be replaced just with pdf?
Yeah, that's the only one that I found actually relevant to the specific tool, but that could be covered by the pdf tag. I don't see any reason to keep a tag around for so few questions, most of which were simply tagged so because the poster probably knew acrobat.
I've sometimes wondered why Adobe was (and is) so uninterested in Linux-based systems. And presumably equally uninterested in BSD systems. It can't be so hard to port it. After all, it presumably works on OS X, which is just another Unix.
@FaheemMitha they did have a Linux version for a while. But what's the point? The users who want a professional PDF creating tool are not really using Linux, so why would they put any resources into that?
@terdon Is there a specific downside to having that tag? Or just extra clutter?
@terdon Just the Reader part. And why wouldn't Unix people use Acrobat if available? By the same people who created Postscript and PDF?
It's actually quite hard to get Acrobat type editing functionality with free software. Not sure why. And the other tools available for Linux aren't that great. I've experimented with some of them.
@FaheemMitha Sure. "Simple" as in it took one genius in the 17th century to come up with a solution in 3 dimensions (call them 4, if you like) and then another 3 centuries for someone to prove that. And now, since that was obviously too simple, they're playing with higher dimensions.
Linux doesn't have many options for creating accessible PDF files outside LibreOffice. And it doesn't have any tools for checking the accessibility of PDF files, or none that I am aware of.
The basic sphere packing problem is indeed simple, when we're talking oranges and a grocer. But the simplicity is inversely proportional to the number of dimensions you bring to bear.
I was just looking at the paper. That sort of hard numerical analysis, especially in an area without established methods, is hair raisingly difficult. She must really have given it her all.
Bear in mind that I am very deeply ignorant of mathematics. All I know about higher dimensions is that you get the 2nd dimension by raising the first to the second power, the 3rd by raising the second to the third power and (this is where it breaks down for me) "so on". I cannot grok what raising the cube to the 4th dimension means. Let alone fancy things like the 24th!
@Tsundoku Well yes, but we make them in LaTeX :P Or submit a doc and the journal makes them into PDFs.
I'm just saying that the vast majority of people willing and able to pay for a PDF creation tool will not be Linux users. Which gives very little incentive to Adobe to spend their effort developing for us.
@FaheemMitha Remind me to explain some complex concept involving DNA, negative strands, positive selection and speciation and tell you how it's "just biology" :P
@FaheemMitha it wasn't back when adobe reader was a thing for Linux.
And macOS has all sorts of special sauce for GUI stuff which Linux presumably lacks.
@terdon Hmm. GUI stuff. Yes, I guess that could be a complicating factor. Though one would hope their code would be sufficiently modular to cope with that.
And I prefer to do it on a computer, because I can easily make small changes, and have the entire thing saved for future reference. Also, there's no question what is written.
@terdon Actually, the former method would be much faster. At least if it was only done once.
@StephenKitt Do you know the PDF language, then?
Apropos of nothing in particular, I was just looking at some old doctor notes of mine, and could make no sense of them. Why do doctors have such horrible handwriting?
I work with PDF a lot, because TeX has now standardized on PDFTeX. So the default output of TeX is now PDF files. It used to be DVI, which you would convert to PS using dvi2ps. Of course, that path still exists, but I think it's used less and less.