def spawn (cmd,
           search_path=1,
           verbose=0,
           dry_run=0):

    """Run another program, specified as a command list 'cmd', in a new
    process.  'cmd' is just the argument list for the new process, ie.
    cmd[0] is the program to run and cmd[1:] are the rest of its arguments.
    There is no way to run a program with a name different from that of its
    executable.

    If 'search_path' is true (the default), the system's executable
    search path will be used to find the program; otherwise, cmd[0]
    must be the exact path to the executable.  If 'dry_run' is true,
    the command will not actually be run.

    Raise DistutilsExecError if running the program fails in any way; just
    return on success.
    """
    if os.name == 'posix':
        _spawn_posix(cmd, search_path, dry_run=dry_run)
    elif os.name == 'nt':
        _spawn_nt(cmd, search_path, dry_run=dry_run)
    elif os.name == 'os2':
        _spawn_os2(cmd, search_path, dry_run=dry_run)
    elif os.name == 'java':
        _spawn_java(cmd, search_path, dry_run=dry_run)
    else:
        raise DistutilsPlatformError, \
              "don't know how to spawn programs on platform '%s'" % os.name

# spawn ()
dataset/ETHPy150Open babble/babble/include/jython/Lib/distutils/spawn.py/spawn/original