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Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug, and the precise symptoms of the bug.
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Emacs-version: "GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.1.7601)
?of 2013-03-17 on MARVIN" ?(a pre-compiled version for MS-Windows)


Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (Copyright 2009)


Function-definition (from python.el):
?(defun run-python (cmd &optional dedicated show) ?... ...)


Typical invocation with Emacs running under MS-Windows 7:
?(run-python "c:/Program Files (x86)/Python/Python31/python.exe -i" nil t)


[Note- I have successfully debugged and patched the bug to be described here; the facts reported below were ascertained during the debugging process.]


This bug occurs whenever the function run-python is invoked, whether by a M-x run-python command, or by C-c C-p or <menu-bar> <Python> <Start interpreter> while editing a file in python-mode, provided that the first argument given to run-python has a pathname containing at least one space (see example invocation shown above -- this is typical when running under MS-Windows 7). When run-python is invoked under these circumstances, it fails with the error message "Spawning child process: invalid argument".


The root cause of this failure is that the space-containing command pathname in the first argument to function run-python is mangled during processing in the function python-shell-make-comint, which is called by run-python. ?This mangling occurs while processing the following line of code in python-shell-make-comint:


? ? ? ? (let* ((cmdlist (split-string-and-unquote cmd))


Since the mangling is actually done in the function split-string-and-unquote, the solution is to avoid applying split-string-and-unquote to the (possibly) space-containing command pathname. ?The successful patch I have constructed does this conservatively by changing the single line of code just displayed to be


? ? ? ? (let* ((cmdlist (list-cmd-components cmd))


where list-cmd-components is a newly written function that first extracts the (possibly) space-containing command path from the command-string while preserving it unchanged, and then calls function split-string-and-unquote on the remainder of the command-string (if any) to separate the command arguments (if any).


I've attached to this e-mail a patch file, Emacs-Bugfix.el, containing the revised definition of function python-shell-make-comint and the new definition of function list-cmd-components. ?When loaded after python.el, this patch file fixes the bug.


? -- ?Lew Creary