Python 2.7 introduced the `sysconfig` module which has a function `get_paths` that returns the fully variable substituted path for the given scheme. This doesn't seem like possible on 2.6 using `distutils.sysconfig` - as variable substitution is done deep in a class method, and not exposed as a public API. At the moment I am writing code like this:

scheme = 'nt' sys.platform == 'win32' else 'unix' scheme += ('_user' if usersite else ( '_prefix' if scheme == 'unix' else ''))

template = INSTALL_SCHEMES[scheme][path]

# hardcoded template substitution (distutils API does not provide # this) template = template.replace('$base', base_dir) template = template.replace('$py_version_short', pyver) if '$user' in template: template = template.replace('$usersite', site.USER_SITE) template = template.replace('$userbase', site.USER_BASE) assert '$' not in template, \ 'Unsubstituded variables left in "%s"' % template return template

Can this be simplified?

-srid