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POWhen to use os.name, sys.platform, or platform.system?
 

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  1. POWhen to use os.name, sys.platform, or platform.system?
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    <p>As far as I know, Python has 3 ways of finding out what operating system is running on:</p> <ol> <li><code>os.name</code></li> <li><code>sys.platform</code></li> <li><code>platform.system()</code></li> </ol> <p>Knowing this information is often useful in conditional imports, or using functionality that differs between platforms (e.g. <code>time.clock()</code> on Windows v.s. <code>time.time()</code> on UNIX).</p> <p>My question is, why 3 different ways of doing this? When should one way be used and not another? Which way is the 'best' (most future-proof or least likely to accidentally exclude a particular system which your program can actually run on)?</p> <p>It seems like <code>sys.platform</code> is more specific than <code>os.name</code>, allowing you to distinguish <code>win32</code> from <code>cygwin</code> (as opposed to just <code>nt</code>), and <code>linux2</code> from <code>darwin</code> (as opposed to just <code>posix</code>). But if that's so, that what about the difference between <code>sys.platform</code> and <code>platform.system()</code>?</p> <p>For example, which is better, this:</p> <pre><code>import sys if sys.platform == 'linux2': # Do Linux-specific stuff </code></pre> <p>or this? :</p> <pre><code>import platform if platform.system() == 'Linux': # Do Linux-specific stuff </code></pre> <p>For now I'll be sticking to <code>sys.platform</code>, so this question isn't particularly urgent, but I would be very grateful for some clarification regarding this.</p>
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    1. COuse `sys.platform.startswith('linux')` instead of `sys.platform == 'linux2'` for future compatibility
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