Python: What OS am I running on?

Question

What do I need to look at to see whether I\'m on Windows or Unix, etc?

Answer 1

/usr/bin/python3.2

def cls():
    from subprocess import call
    from platform import system

    os = system()
    if os == 'Linux':
        call('clear', shell = True)
    elif os == 'Windows':
        call('cls', shell = True)

Answer 2

For Jython the only way to get os name I found is to check os.name Java property (tried with sys, os and platform modules for Jython 2.5.3 on WinXP):

def get_os_platform():
    """return platform name, but for Jython it uses os.name Java property"""
    ver = sys.platform.lower()
    if ver.startswith('java'):
        import java.lang
        ver = java.lang.System.getProperty("os.name").lower()
    print('platform: %s' % (ver))
    return ver

Answer 3

Check the available tests with module platform and print the answer out for your system:

import platform

print dir(platform)

for x in dir(platform):
    if x[0].isalnum():
        try:
            result = getattr(platform, x)()
            print "platform."+x+": "+result
        except TypeError:
            continue

Answer 4

Interesting results on windows 8:

>>> import os
>>> os.name
'nt'
>>> import platform
>>> platform.system()
'Windows'
>>> platform.release()
'post2008Server'

Edit: That's a bug

Answer 5

How about a new answer:

import psutil
psutil.MACOS   #True (OSX is deprecated)
psutil.WINDOWS #False
psutil.LINUX   #False 

This would be the output if I was using MACOS

Answer 6

I am using the WLST tool that comes with weblogic, and it doesn't implement the platform package.

wls:/offline> import os
wls:/offline> print os.name
java 
wls:/offline> import sys
wls:/offline> print sys.platform
'java1.5.0_11'

Apart from patching the system javaos.py (issue with os.system() on windows 2003 with jdk1.5) (which I can't do, I have to use weblogic out of the box), this is what I use:

def iswindows():
  os = java.lang.System.getProperty( "os.name" )
  return "win" in os.lower()