i have a function which calls os.popen 
this works just fine: 
	p = os.popen(stmt, "r")
	print p.readline()

however, this does not:
p = os.popen(stmt, "r")
print p.readline()
while 1:
	line = p.readline()
	print line

oh and this works too:
p = os.popen(stmt, "r")
line = p.readline()
print line

so i can do readline outside of the while loop
but inside a while loop
it returns a null value and then breaks out (according to the logic i wrote)