revisiting the "What am I running on?" question

[songbird]

Chris Angelico wrote:
> songbird wrote:
...
>>   no win64?
>
> The value "win32" means Windows (or, more technically, "Windows NT
> family", as opposed to Win95/Win98 - but since Win XP, that's the only
> type of Windows there is). If you actually care about whether it's a
> 32-bit or 64-bit OS, you can look at sys.maxsize.

  i'm not sure what system my code will actually
run on or not.  i got rid of my old hardware as
part of a cleanup so i can't test things like 
that anymore without some kind of emulator or 
other kind people.

  at present i just want to know what kind of
system i am running on so i can put my configuration 
file and saved games in the correct places.

  if i can't determine what kind of system i am
running on then i won't run at all (instead of
risking creating a directory or file on a system
that doesn't have such ways of doing that - i 
really don't know what people may attempt after
all).


>>   no arm(s)?
>
> That's a CPU architecture. What OS would you be running on your ARM?
> If it's Windows, "win32". If it's Linux, "linux". Etc.

  ok.  since i never have such things to try i 
don't always know what they run or how it looks
to a python3 program.

  anyways, one thing i do like about an actual
probe of the temporary kind is that i can answer
the question of:

  "Do I have temporary directory and file creation 
permissions on this system or not?"

  a more accurate answer for any longer term storage
would tell me if i have more permanent directory and 
file creation permissions or not, but my program 
doesn't require those since it will run without a 
configuration file or any saved games.


  songbird