This is a patch for Bug #1436206:

On Windows, if the path name of a CGI script to be run
contains space characters, it need to be quoted
properly when called via os.popen2/3. Otherwise the
script can not be executed.

Solved by using commands.mkarg() to quote arguments
where necessary.

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Would it simplify matters if CGIHTTPServer used the
subprocess module, which tries to provide a
platform-independent interface?

Note that commands.mkarg() is written for UNIX shells. While it may work with spaces in the file name, it may produce illegal Windows command line commands in other cases.

I think the best way to solve this would be to use the
subprocess module, as amk suggested.

I included a new patch which for CGIHTTPServer which uses subprocess. Unfortunately 
this does not work ion Windows due to a problem with subprocess: On Windows 
passing the request.rfile (a _fileobject wrapper arround the socket) as stdin/out
lead to an error. I'll file a bugreport on that case.

Beside of this, the patch should solve the problem in a platform-independent way.
File Added: CGIHTTPServer.patch

Which error is that? Is it perhaps this: http://python.org/sf/1124861 ?

No, the error it's related to http://python.org/sf/1175984 (and maybe http://python.org/sf/1260171).

The bugreport I spoke of has been filed as http://python.org/sf/1681674.

Issue 1681674 was closed as won't fix, so IIUC this patch won't work.

A patch that includes unit tests and doc changes is presumably needed to take this forward.

Shouldn't this be closed? CGIHTTPServer *has* been updated to use subprocess on windows and the dependency has been closed as wont fix.

Right, closing this one too.  Thanks!