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

For UNIX, at least, this works...

import commands
username = commands.getoutput("echo $(whoami)")
print username

edit: I just looked it up and this works on Windows and UNIX:

import commands
username = commands.getoutput("whoami")

On UNIX it returns your username, but on Windows, it returns your user's group, slash, your username.

--

I.E.

UNIX returns: "username"

Windows returns: "domain/username"

--

It's interesting, but probably not ideal unless you are doing something in the terminal anyway... in which case you would probably be using os.system to begin with. For example, a while ago I needed to add my user to a group, so I did (this is in Linux, mind you)

import os
os.system("sudo usermod -aG \"group_name\" $(whoami)")
print "You have been added to \"group_name\"! Please log out for this to take effect"

I feel like that is easier to read and you don't have to import pwd or getpass.

I also feel like having "domain/user" could be helpful in certain applications in Windows.