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

in the same vein....

import platform
is_windows=(platform.system().lower().find("win") > -1)

if(is_windows): lv_dll=LV_dll("my_so_dll.dll")
else:           lv_dll=LV_dll("./my_so_dll.so")

Answer 2

You can also use only platform module without importing os module to get all the information.

>>> import platform
>>> platform.os.name
'posix'
>>> platform.uname()
('Darwin', 'mainframe.local', '15.3.0', 'Darwin Kernel Version 15.3.0: Thu Dec 10 18:40:58 PST 2015; root:xnu-3248.30.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64', 'x86_64', 'i386')

A nice and tidy layout for reporting purpose can be achieved using this line:

for i in zip(['system','node','release','version','machine','processor'],platform.uname()):print i[0],':',i[1]

That gives this output:

system : Darwin
node : mainframe.local
release : 15.3.0
version : Darwin Kernel Version 15.3.0: Thu Dec 10 18:40:58 PST 2015; root:xnu-3248.30.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64
machine : x86_64
processor : i386

What is missing usually is the operating system version but you should know if you are running windows, linux or mac a platform indipendent way is to use this test:

In []: for i in [platform.linux_distribution(),platform.mac_ver(),platform.win32_ver()]:
   ....:     if i[0]:
   ....:         print 'Version: ',i[0]