undefined variables

[Skaperen]

it is a function. that function constructs a command with information given in the function call arguments (AWS region name) and global reference settings (command path) then calls subprocess.Popen with it. it returns the value Popen() returned. the caller does this for every region given on the command line or, if none were given, for every known region. a mistake in the function, a typo, cause it to pick up all known regions instead of the one that was being passed by the caller. the command it was giving to Popen() was the script itself. the intention was to not launch a process at all if only one region was given. but that condition failed to be created resulting in thousands of processes and a system crash.

having the function not call Popen() would mean something would need to output mocked results that other code would be expecting to get over a pipe per child. if there is no child, then either something has to produce fake data to test the code that reads the results.