how to determine Operating System in Use?

James Cunningham jameshcunningham at gmail.com
Wed Dec 13 23:10:50 EST 2006


On 2006-12-13 19:28:14 -0500, nanjundi at gmail.com said:

> 
> 
> On Dec 13, 6:32 pm, "Ian F. Hood" <IanFH... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi
>> In typically windows environments I have used:
>> if 'Windows' in os.environ['OS']...
>> to prove it, but now I need to properly support different environments.
>> To do so I must accurately determine what system the python instance is
>> running on (linux, win, mac, etc).
>> Is there a best practises way to do this?
>> TIA
>> Ian
> 
> I would do this:
> --------------------
> if os.name == ''posix':
>     linuxStuff()
> elif os.name == 'nt':
>     windowsStuff()
> elif os.name == 'os2': ...
> -------------------
> os.name is  'posix', 'nt', 'os2', 'mac', 'ce' or 'riscos'
> 
> -N

Bearing in mind, of course, that Mac will return "posix", too. And 
Cygwin might. Erg.

Best,
James




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