pythongh-87597: Document TimeoutExpired.stdout & .stderr types (pythonGH-97685)

gpshead · miss-islington · commit 7bc3ec6e34a6 · 2022-09-30T17:45:53.000Z
This documents the behavior that has always been the case since timeout support was introduced in Python 3.3. (cherry picked from commit b05dd79) Co-authored-by: Gregory P. Smith <greg@krypto.org>
diff --git a/Doc/library/subprocess.rst b/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
@@ -193,7 +193,10 @@ underlying :class:`Popen` interface can be used directly.
     .. attribute:: output
 
         Output of the child process if it was captured by :func:`run` or
-        :func:`check_output`.  Otherwise, ``None``.
+        :func:`check_output`.  Otherwise, ``None``.  This is always
+        :class:`bytes` when any output was captured regardless of the
+        ``text=True`` setting.  It may remain ``None`` instead of ``b''``
+        when no output was observed.
 
     .. attribute:: stdout
 
@@ -202,7 +205,9 @@ underlying :class:`Popen` interface can be used directly.
     .. attribute:: stderr
 
         Stderr output of the child process if it was captured by :func:`run`.
-        Otherwise, ``None``.
+        Otherwise, ``None``.  This is always :class:`bytes` when stderr output
+        was captured regardless of the ``text=True`` setting.  It may remain
+        ``None`` instead of ``b''`` when no stderr output was observed.
 
     .. versionadded:: 3.3
 
