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 can probably use:

os.environ.get('USERNAME')

or

os.environ.get('USER')

But it's not going to be safe because environment variables can be changed.

Answer 2

To me using os module looks the best for portability: Works best on both Linux and Windows.

import os

# Gives user's home directory
userhome = os.path.expanduser('~')          

print "User's home Dir: " + userhome

# Gives username by splitting path based on OS
print "username: " + os.path.split(userhome)[-1]           

Output:

Windows:

User's home Dir: C:\Users\myuser

username: myuser

Linux:

User's home Dir: /root

username: root

No need of installing any modules or extensions.

Answer 3

Using only standard python libs:

from os import environ,getcwd
getUser = lambda: environ["USERNAME"] if "C:" in getcwd() else environ["USER"]
user = getUser()

Works on Windows, Mac or Linux

Alternatively, you could remove one line with an immediate invocation:

from os import environ,getcwd
user = (lambda: environ["USERNAME"] if "C:" in getcwd() else environ["USER"])()

Answer 4

You can also use:

 os.getlogin()

Answer 5

If you are needing this to get user's home dir, below could be considered as portable (win32 and linux at least), part of a standard library.

>>> os.path.expanduser('~')
'C:\\Documents and Settings\\johnsmith'

Also you could parse such string to get only last path component (ie. user name).

See: os.path.expanduser

Answer 6

I wrote the plx module some time ago to get the user name in a portable way on Unix and Windows (among other things): http://www.decalage.info/en/python/plx

Usage:

import plx

username = plx.get_username()

(it requires win32 extensions on Windows)