Is there a portable way to get the current username in Python?

Question

Is there a portable way to get the current user\'s username in Python (i.e., one that works under both Linux and Windows, at least). It would work like os.getuid

Answer 1

You best bet would be to combine os.getuid() with pwd.getpwuid():

import os
import pwd

def get_username():
    return pwd.getpwuid( os.getuid() )[ 0 ]

Refer to the pwd docs for more details:

http://docs.python.org/library/pwd.html