[Python-Dev] Portable and OS-dependent module idea/proposal/brain fart

[Guido van Rossum]

>     ... the os module should *expose* only those features common to all of
>     the big 3 platforms ...

Why?

My experience has been that functionality that was thought to be Unix
specific has gradually become available on other platforms, which
makes it hard to decide in which module a function should be placed.

The proper test for portability of a program is not whether it imports
certain module names, but whether it uses certain functions from those
modules (and whether it uses them in a portable fashion).  As
platforms evolve, a program that was previously thought to be
non-portable might become more portable.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)