determine 32 or 64 bit architecture with python 2.2

[David Rushby]

On Jun 19, 4:28 pm, John Machin <sjmac... at lexicon.net> wrote:
> On Jun 19, 9:17 pm, Kai Rosenthal <kairosent... at tiscali.de> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> > how can I determine the architecture (32 or 64bit) with python 2.2 on
> > Windows or Unix (AIX, Solaris) OS, without the modul platform?
> > Thanks for your hints, Kai
>
> What happens when you fire up a 64-bit Python and type
>     import sys; sys.maxint
> at it?

That's not suitable, because of the differences between LP64 and LLP64
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit#64-bit_data_models ).

Try
  python -c "import struct; print struct.calcsize('P')"
instead.  That calculates the size of a pointer.