Comment 6 for bug 348681

Okay, so if the file descriptor is created with something like:

$ exec 5<whatever.txt

then this file descriptor *will* be inherited by subprocesses.

radix@lantern:~$ echo "hi" > foo.txt
radix@lantern:~$ exec 6<foo.txt
radix@lantern:~$ python -c 'import os; print os.read(6, 1024)'
hi

however, other file descriptors, like those created with redirects, are not passed to unrelated child processes: for example, doing "cat > foo.txt & python" does not allow "python" to inherit the file descriptor for foo.txt.

So we need to figure out exactly how those file descriptors that colin is talking about are created.