Book Image

The Python Workshop - Second Edition

By : Corey Wade, Mario Corchero Jiménez, Andrew Bird, Dr. Lau Cher Han, Graham Lee
4.7 (3)
Book Image

The Python Workshop - Second Edition

4.7 (3)
By: Corey Wade, Mario Corchero Jiménez, Andrew Bird, Dr. Lau Cher Han, Graham Lee

Overview of this book

Python is among the most popular programming languages in the world. It’s ideal for beginners because it’s easy to read and write, and for developers, because it’s widely available with a strong support community, extensive documentation, and phenomenal libraries – both built-in and user-contributed. This project-based course has been designed by a team of expert authors to get you up and running with Python. You’ll work though engaging projects that’ll enable you to leverage your newfound Python skills efficiently in technical jobs, personal projects, and job interviews. The book will help you gain an edge in data science, web development, and software development, preparing you to tackle real-world challenges in Python and pursue advanced topics on your own. Throughout the chapters, each component has been explicitly designed to engage and stimulate different parts of the brain so that you can retain and apply what you learn in the practical context with maximum impact. By completing the course from start to finish, you’ll walk away feeling capable of tackling any real-world Python development problem.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
13
Chapter 13: The Evolution of Python – Discovering New Python Features

Interacting with the OS

One of the most common uses of Python is to write code that interacts with the OS and its filesystem. Whether you are working with files or you just need some basic information about the OS, this topic will cover the essentials of how to do it in a multiplatform way through the os, sys, platform, and pathlib modules of the Standard Library.

OS information

There are three key modules that are used to inspect the runtime environment and the OS. The os module enables miscellaneous interfaces with the OS. You can use it to inspect environment variables or to get other user and process-related information. This, combined with the platform module (which contains information about the interpreter and the machine where the process is running) and the sys module (which provides you with helpful system-specific information) will usually provide you with all the information that you need about the runtime environment.

Exercise 91 – inspecting the current...