From bbaac99b661f07558acd05d9ebea306586a27183 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: andreuu-tsai <32549555+andreuu-tsai@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2026 20:32:28 +0800 Subject: [PATCH] gh-138234: clarify returncode behavior for subprocesses created with `shell=True` (GH-138536) (cherry picked from commit 8a531f89df8f8bf4c4fe395f9edcdc19852bdf1c) Co-authored-by: andreuu-tsai <32549555+andreuu-tsai@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Kumar Aditya --- Doc/library/asyncio-subprocess.rst | 12 ++++++++++-- Doc/library/subprocess.rst | 5 +++++ 2 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/Doc/library/asyncio-subprocess.rst b/Doc/library/asyncio-subprocess.rst index 7ac9aa724ce0f8..341d8a1b1480ce 100644 --- a/Doc/library/asyncio-subprocess.rst +++ b/Doc/library/asyncio-subprocess.rst @@ -311,8 +311,16 @@ their completion. A ``None`` value indicates that the process has not terminated yet. - A negative value ``-N`` indicates that the child was terminated - by signal ``N`` (POSIX only). + For processes created with :func:`~asyncio.create_subprocess_exec`, a negative + value ``-N`` indicates that the child was terminated by signal ``N`` + (POSIX only). + + For processes created with :func:`~asyncio.create_subprocess_shell`, the + return code reflects the exit status of the shell itself (e.g. ``/bin/sh``), + which may map signals to codes such as ``128+N``. See the + documentation of the shell (for example, the Bash manual's Exit Status) + for details. + .. _asyncio-subprocess-threads: diff --git a/Doc/library/subprocess.rst b/Doc/library/subprocess.rst index f6d9a6133fa8c0..4b2a1a9f658601 100644 --- a/Doc/library/subprocess.rst +++ b/Doc/library/subprocess.rst @@ -952,6 +952,11 @@ Reassigning them to new values is unsupported: A negative value ``-N`` indicates that the child was terminated by signal ``N`` (POSIX only). + When ``shell=True``, the return code reflects the exit status of the shell + itself (e.g. ``/bin/sh``), which may map signals to codes such as + ``128+N``. See the documentation of the shell (for example, the Bash + manual's Exit Status) for details. + Windows Popen Helpers ---------------------