An overdue step would be an interface to execve that isn't based on a single string, but uses actual lists. I recall the python docs have a big red warning box

An overdue step would be an interface to execve that isn't based on a single string, but uses actual lists. I recall the python docs have a big red warning box that you can enable shell-style-single-string mode instead of a list, but it's highly dicouraged due to security problems. php has about 5 ways to execute programs, but all of them enforce this insecure interface.