New submission from Rémi Lapeyre <remi.lapeyre@henki.fr>: The documentation states that "*key*, *default* and the result are str." at https://github.com/python/cpython/blame/3.8/Doc/library/os.rst#L224 but either I'm missing something or it's not actually true: $ python -c 'import os; print(type(os.getenv("FOO")))' <class 'NoneType'> $ python -c 'import os; print(type(os.getenv("FOO", default=1)))' <class 'int'> Only *key* needs to be a string as it is used to lookup the value in os.environ. I think this can be fixed by a new contributor ---------- assignee: docs@python components: Documentation messages: 362689 nosy: docs@python, remi.lapeyre priority: normal severity: normal status: open title: os.getenv documentation is misleading type: enhancement versions: Python 3.9 _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <https://bugs.python.org/issue39759> _______________________________________