old_contents: #! /usr/bin/env python
  """Basic tests for os.popen()
  
    Particularly useful for platforms that fake popen.
  """
  
  import unittest
  from test import test_support
  import os, sys
  
  # Test that command-lines get down as we expect.
  # To do this we execute:
  #    python -c "import sys;print sys.argv" {rest_of_commandline}
  # This results in Python being spawned and printing the sys.argv list.
  # We can then eval() the result of this, and see what each argv was.
  python = sys.executable
  if ' ' in python:
      python = '"' + python + '"'     # quote embedded space for cmdline
  
  class PopenTest(unittest.TestCase):
      def _do_test_commandline(self, cmdline, expected):
          cmd = '%s -c "import sys;print sys.argv" %s' % (python, cmdline)
          data = os.popen(cmd).read()
          got = eval(data)[1:] # strip off argv[0]
          self.assertEqual(got, expected)
  
      def test_popen(self):
          self.assertRaises(TypeError, os.popen)
          self._do_test_commandline(
              "foo bar",
              ["foo", "bar"]
          )
          self._do_test_commandline(
              'foo "spam and eggs" "silly walk"',
              ["foo", "spam and eggs", "silly walk"]
          )
          self._do_test_commandline(
              'foo "a \\"quoted\\" arg" bar',
              ["foo", 'a "quoted" arg', "bar"]
          )
          test_support.reap_children()
  
  def test_main():
      test_support.run_unittest(PopenTest)
  
  if __name__ == "__main__":
      test_main()
  
new_contents: #! /usr/bin/env python
  """Basic tests for os.popen()
  
    Particularly useful for platforms that fake popen.
  """
  
  import unittest
  from test import test_support
  import os, sys
  
  # Test that command-lines get down as we expect.
  # To do this we execute:
  #    python -c "import sys;print sys.argv" {rest_of_commandline}
  # This results in Python being spawned and printing the sys.argv list.
  # We can then eval() the result of this, and see what each argv was.
  python = sys.executable
  if ' ' in python:
      python = '"' + python + '"'     # quote embedded space for cmdline
  
  class PopenTest(unittest.TestCase):
      def _do_test_commandline(self, cmdline, expected):
          cmd = '%s -c "import sys;print sys.argv" %s' % (python, cmdline)
          data = os.popen(cmd).read()
          got = eval(data)[1:] # strip off argv[0]
          self.assertEqual(got, expected)
  
      def test_popen(self):
          self.assertRaises(TypeError, os.popen)
          self._do_test_commandline(
              "foo bar",
              ["foo", "bar"]
          )
          self._do_test_commandline(
              'foo "spam and eggs" "silly walk"',
              ["foo", "spam and eggs", "silly walk"]
          )
          self._do_test_commandline(
              'foo "a \\"quoted\\" arg" bar',
              ["foo", 'a "quoted" arg', "bar"]
          )
          test_support.reap_children()
  
      def test_return_code(self):
          self.assertEqual(os.popen("exit 0").close(), None)
          if os.name == 'nt':
              self.assertEqual(os.popen("exit 42").close(), 42)
          else:
              self.assertEqual(os.popen("exit 42").close(), 42 << 8)
  
  def test_main():
      test_support.run_unittest(PopenTest)
  
  if __name__ == "__main__":
      test_main()
  
subject: Add basic tests for the return value of os.popen().close(). According to #6358, python 3.0 has a different implementation that behaves differently.