From 68f583658247ceced323d79e1cf775c91c53c019 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Joshua Herman <30265+zitterbewegung@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2023 10:46:12 -0600
Subject: gh-87452: Improve the Popen.returncode docs

Clarifies that it remains None until a method checking the child process status has been called and noticed it has terminated.
---
 Doc/library/subprocess.rst | 9 ++++++---
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Doc/library/subprocess.rst b/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
index 2b5a82e..53dfbf8 100644
--- a/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
@@ -919,9 +919,12 @@ Reassigning them to new values is unsupported:
 
 .. attribute:: Popen.returncode
 
-   The child return code, set by :meth:`poll` and :meth:`wait` (and indirectly
-   by :meth:`communicate`).  A ``None`` value indicates that the process
-   hasn't terminated yet.
+   The child return code. Initially ``None``, :attr:`returncode` is set by
+   a call to the :meth:`poll`, :meth:`wait`, or :meth:`communicate` methods
+   if they detect that the process has terminated.
+
+   A ``None`` value indicates that the process hadn't yet terminated at the
+   time of the last method call.
 
    A negative value ``-N`` indicates that the child was terminated by signal
    ``N`` (POSIX only).
-- 
cgit v0.12