[Python-ideas] os.architecture

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 6:38 AM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik at gmail.com> wrote:
> If Python is about readability then looking at your example, I have
> two questions:
> 1. What is platform - hardware, CPU, OS, Python flavor?
> 2. What is uname()[4]?
>
> For os.architecture I have only one question - what is the returned
> value? And it is easy to remember once you get it. It is also easy to
> debug.

You can also use platform.uname().machine if you prefer readability,
but that doesn't work on Python 2.

Number of bits is sufficient only if you can always assume you're on
the same architecture. It's much better to simply quote the uname
value. And hey, you can even cut your code down from four lines to
one:

download('http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL2-2.0.1-win32-'+uname()[4])+'.zip')

If you get back a 404, obviously this platform's not supported. Bingo!
You've just protected yourself against trying to download and run
Intel code on an ARM chip.

ChrisA