Your suggestion doesn't work on Linux: $ echo 'exit 42' >xprog $ chmod 755 xprog $ python -c 'import os; os.execv("./xprog", ["./xprog"])'; echo $? Tra

Your suggestion doesn't work on Linux: $ echo 'exit 42' >xprog $ chmod 755 xprog $ python -c 'import os; os.execv("./xprog", ["./xprog"])'; echo $? Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error 1