[Python-Dev] Recommended way to tell platform

[Guido van Rossum]

> [Guido]
> > This does bring up an interesting question: what's the recommended
> > way to distinguish a certain platform?  There's os.name,
> > sys.platform, the platform module, and I've also seen code testing
> > for os.sep=='/'.

[Tim]
> I ask myself that question every time I need to do it.  Out of sheer
> momentum now, I almost always use
> 
>     if sys.platform in ('win32',):

Why the 'in singleton tuple'?  Still holding out for that compiler
optimization that promises to make tuples of constants code constants
themselves?

> I dislike using os.name == 'nt', mostly because if we asked all
> Windows Python users which OS they use, only a tiny percentage would
> answer "NT".  Since NT is a dying OS, 'nt' is an increasingly
> odd-looking thing to test agaist.

And so is 'posix' when you're looking at Linux. :-)

We can't change these values easily so they will look odder and odder
as time progresses.

> OTOH, I have no idea when or why sys.platform == "win32" would give
> a different result than os.name == "nt".

Maybe on cygwin?  I really don't know.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)