environment variable issue

[Fredrik Lundh]

Michel Leunen wrote:

> Could someone explain me what I'm doing wrong here? I'm trying to 
> retrieve the value of an environment variable in Ubuntu 8.04 like this:
> 
>  >>> import os
>  >>> os.environ['USER']
> 'michel'
> 
> This works but this doesn't:
> 
>  >>> os.environ['HOSTNAME']
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.5/UserDict.py", line 22, in __getitem__
>     raise KeyError(key)
> KeyError: 'HOSTNAME'
> 
> Why is it working in the first case but not in the second one. I must be 
> missing something but it seems I'm not able to figure it out.

this might help:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2008-September/507933.html

(scanning the subjects of recent and ongoing threads before posting is 
always a good idea).

</F>